Taiwan scoops three silvers in genetic engineering contest

Washington, Nov. 9 (CNA) Three university teams from Taiwan won three silver medals in the 2010 International Genetic Engineering Machine competition (iGEM) held in the United States this week. The iGEM is the premier undergraduate synthetic biology competition. Since the launch of the competition in 2004, it has become a popular contest among university students around the world, the organizer said. The teams from National Chiao Tung University, Tzu Chi University and National Yang Ming University, competed against 130 top universities from the United States, Canada, Europe, Asia, Latin America and Africa in the three-day event organized by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's iCampus program, starting last Saturday. The three universities representing Taiwan were each awarded silver trophies for their outstanding work in relevant fields in a ceremony held on Monday. The objective of the iGEM is to provide a platform for students to compete to design and build engineered biological systems using advanced genetic components and technologies. The participating teams choose a research project within the field of synthetic biology, and have no longer than a summer to run experiments and prepare their data before presenting their research at the annual competition. (By Jorge Liu and Hermia Lin) ENDITEM/cs

Taiwan scoops three silvers in genetic engineering contest Washington, Nov. 9 (CNA) Three university teams from Taiwan won three silver medals in the 2010 International Genetic Engineering Machine competition (iGEM) held in the United States this week.