About
Synthetic Biology Club exists to provide undergraduate and graduate students the opportunity to learn laboratory techniques by exploring research focuses related to the field of synthetic biology of interest to the current year's student group.
We’re less of a club and more of a research lab. This year, we’re focused on solving coral bleaching using synthetic biology or, genetic engineering. Corals have a symbiotic relationship with algae. When environmental stressors are present (as a result of climate change/human factors), the algae are expelled from the corals and what results is a nearly dead coral skeleton. This is coral bleaching. We want to genetically modify the algal symbionts to better resist bleaching. We compete in an annual research competition, iGEM, to share our work.