An iGEM of an idea

Early last month, associate editor Alla Katsnelson traveled to a remarkable event at MIT. She watched as 59 teams of undergraduates from around the world spent two days using the tools of synthetic biology to build impressive machines. (See Alla's blogs on the subject here.) They were there to take part in a jamboree that marks the culmination of iGEM, the International Genetically Engineered Machine Competition.

The team from Peking University won for creating a division of labor among bacteria to express fluorescent proteins in an alternating sequence. Other winners: A crew from Berkeley, Calif., engineered an artificial blood substitute called bactoblood. One group from Paris developed a technique to create the first multicellular synthetic bacterium. Peking's team created a bacterial logic circuit, and Ljubljana, Slovenia's developed strategies for HIV therapies.

iGEM is a compelling proposition at a number of levels. It involves - deeply involves - a large number of undergrads in a hot area of science. The students work in teams over summer, learning how to collaborate on the design and execution of experiments. It's scalable, with groups of three to 10 or more students getting involved at campuses all over the world. All the teams have an online presence, covering the gamut of possibilities for a Web site. I found a nice line of online notebooks, some so-so video presentations, and so on. Again, great training.

What makes iGEM important is that for science to thrive, a proportion of the very best undergraduates need to choose to become researchers. This is an increasingly unlikely prospect. When I've talked to savvy students, they see research as a poor, even perverse choice compared to medicine, which is viewed as more prestigious, and business, which is seen as more glamorous. Also, they realize that while both medicine and business involve arduous years of training, those years are a cakewalk compared to research training: The average age at which investigators receive their first independent NIH grant is a stupefying 42.9 years.

Our best hope is to fire the imagination of students who have the right aptitude and attitude, and the only way to do that is to get them into the lab. Fortunately, iGEM is showing the way ahead. The Amgen Scholars Program (www.amgenscholars.com) does as well. I attended the national symposium of the inaugural class of scholars last summer and was hugely impressed by the quality of the student presentations, which included topics such as "Investigations of viral recognition by Toll-like receptor 2," "Facilitating protein evolution with molecular chaperones," and "Lipid profile characterization of mammalian cells undergoing autophagy." The students' command of the science in assessing one another's projects and the cross examination that they gave to guest speakers were notable. All the students that I spoke to were enthused by the experience, and several claimed to be considering, for the first time, a career in research.

A couple features distinguish this program as special. First, its sheer scale is unprecedented: This year, 10 leading institutions hosted 250 summer students from 100 different colleges. Second, despite its extraordinary cost, Amgen Foundation has committed $25 million over eight years. Then there is the fanatical enthusiasm and attention to detail of the organizers. One aspect of this is an external audit covering a wide range of criteria. The audit should help optimize the program and provide pointers for the many smaller institute-specific summer research programs across the country.

The main message from both programs is that lab experience is the greatest motivator for young people. One student who has spent undergraduate years on both sides of the Atlantic described a mostly classroom-based learning experience in the United States, in contrast with a practical-based course in the United Kingdom. If this anecdote generally holds, then priorities need to be changed. Lab experience shouldn't be just a summer add-on for the lucky few.