Team:CIDEB-UANL Mexico/Team-Origins

How it all started...

We are the second team from our high school (CIDEB) ever to participate in the iGEM competition. Last year’s team, after obtaining the principal’s authorization, introduced our generation the opportunity of being part of this year’s team. Eighteen members were selected out of a group of students who were interested in the competition and attended a series of courses for basic knowledge of microbiology and synthetic biology. Our school doesn’t teach these topics, so it was something beyond regular classes. Anyone could attend these courses, but the team was limited to a number of 20 students.

In September, 2013, the school invited all the 3th semester students to participate in a selection in order to create the team IGEM-CIDEB 2013. A big conference was planned and a lot of students went in order to know a more about the competition and Synthetic Biology.

The filters consisted in 2 phases. The first one was a series of classes with information about Synthetic Biology during October and November. The classes were given by 2 of the instructors. In these classes, each week was taught a topic about Synthetic Biology and it was given an assignment for each topic.

The second phase was about a workshop in the laboratory with practices such as transformation, miniPreparation of DNA plasmidic, electrophoresis and some others, during the second week of January 2013. Based on the participation, assistance and compromise, the final team was selected.