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Vilnius University (VU) students outperformed more than 250 of the world’s strongest university teams, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Harvard, and teams from William and Mary University. In addition to the competition’s grand prize, VU students were awarded gold medals and were nominated in 8 additional award categories, of which the winners were announced in two, including the best project in the field of environmental protection.
This year’s Vilnius-Lithuania iGEM team presented the FlavoFlow project in the competition, which deals with the topic of exogenous infections of fish. It is calculated that Flavobacterium Infections caused by bacteria of the genus can kill about 70% of fish farms in just 72 hours. cultivated products. For this reason, it is crucial to identify the pathogen as accurately and quickly as possible.
The team developed a rapid detection tool for the early diagnosis of diseases in fish farms in search of solutions to this problem. At the same time, in order to lay the foundations for various solutions to the problem, the Vilnius-Lithuania iGEM team paid close attention to the development of platforms for the treatment and prevention of exogenous fish infections.
This evaluation of the project is a great achievement for Lithuania. Since 2013, when the number of contestants exceeded 200, the same team has not been able to win the contest twice. However, this year, the Vilnius-Lithuania iGEM team rewrote not only the history of Lithuanian life sciences, but also the history of the iGEM competition: it won the grand prize twice. The team hopes that this achievement will not only promote greater public participation in the life sciences world, but also invite foreign companies to invest in the life sciences field in Lithuania.
The modern biotechnology company Thermo Fisher Scientific, which supplies the team with the necessary reagents for the experiments produced in Vilnius, constantly contributes to the success of the VU student team. Financial support from this company also helps implement other team projects for public education.
Lithuanians have been participating in the iGEM competition since 2015. Already in the first year, the VU student team won gold medals and a nomination for one of the five best projects in the field of scientific progress. The 2017 team, like this year, won the main prize of the competition, last year a gold medal and was nominated among the best teams in up to four categories.
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