The Aalto-Helsinki 2023 is a multidisciplinary and international team consisting of 10 students from the University of Helsinki and Aalto University. We are excited to participate in the world's largest synthetic biology competition iGEM with our diverse team with backgrounds in various fields of biosciences and technology. Our aim is to develop an innovative and impactful synthetic biology project that advances scientific research and benefits society.

To help up in this, we have the support of our PIs Heli Viskari, Aalto University lecturer, Department of Bioproducts and Biosystems, and Markus Linder, Aalto University professor of Biomolecular materials. Additionally, we have been supported by staff scientist Sesilja Aranko, academy research fellow Rahul Mangayil, postdoctoral researcher Salla Koskela, and doctoral researcher Natalia Kakko from the Department of Bioproducts and Biosystems, Aalto University, and postdoctoral researcher Alesia Levanova from the Molecular and Integrative Biosciences Research Programme, University of Helsinki.
A full list of people who have shared their time and knowledge with us is available on the attributions page of our wiki.

Apart from this website, you can follow our journey on our Instagram and Facebook.

Plastic pollution and food scarcity are major global challenges. Our project, called PET-2-Protein, aims to provide a sustainable solution to address these issues by developing a proof-of-concept approach to upcycle polyethylene terephthalate (PET) into single-cell proteins.

PET hydrolases are promising biocatalysts for the development of enzymatic PET degradation. One such PET hydrolase, IsPETase, was discovered back in 2016 from a novel bacterial strain isolated from a Japanese landfill (Yoshida et al., 2016). Since then, new variants such as FAST-PETase have been developed, and have been shown to exhibit improved enzymatic activity (Lu et al., 2022). Furthermore, the degradation products have potential to serve as carbon sources for natural and genetically engineered microbes alike (Tiso et al., 2022).

In the first stage of our project, we focused on expressing the FAST-PETase enzyme which is required for depolymerizing PET into ethylene glycol and terephthalate. In the second step, we investigated the ability of wild-type strains such as Rhodococcus opacus and Comamonas testosteroni to utilize these monomers as a carbon source through adaptive laboratory evolution. Lastly, we also drafted plans to engineer Pseudomonas putida for the task.

The full description of our project can be found on our wiki.

We are happy to announce that PET-2-Protein was awarded a gold medal at the 2023 Grand Jamboree, with additional nominations in the overgrad category for:

	Best Environment Project
	Best Education
	Best Wiki
	Best Integrated Human Practices

See the full results of the 2023 iGEM competition here.

International Genetically Engineered Machine iGEM is an international synthetic biology competition originating from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston, USA. The iGEM competition challenges students to design and implement a project within a short time frame using innovation, design, experimental work and modelling applications.

The broader purpose of our project is to promote and increase the understanding of synthetic biology in Finland and around the world. Synthetic biology is a field of science and technology that combines biology with engineering principles. The basic principle is to design new genes, genetic devices, metabolic routes and entire organisms to create novel products and production pathways. Standardization is also a key component of this process, which is why one goal of the iGEM competition is to maintain the "BioBrick part registry" - a library of standardized genetic parts.

Synthetic biology has the potential to provide valuable solutions to many of today's problems. However, media and the general public still sometimes see genetically modified organisms rather as a threat than an opportunity. We work responsibly and take safety and ethics carefully into account in our project design and laboratory work. We conduct research that is safe for us and the environment.