The International Genetically Engineered Machine (IGEM) competition at MIT wrapped up a couple of hours ago. Over the weekend, it brought together 35 teams of undergraduate students from all over the world, armed with their posters and Powerpoint presentations, ready to outdo each other with the results of their projects in synthetic biology. They spent the summer building biological circuits—artificial strings of genes—out of a set of standardized parts (which the synthetic biology community calls BioBricks) and then plugging them into cells to get them to do novel things, such as produce fragrant odors or act like oscillators.

This is the fourth year Randy Rettberg, Drew Endy and Tom Knight, synthetic biology pioneers at MIT, have put on the competition. Most teams this year and in previous years have tinkered with E. coli. But two teams stood out this year because they decided to take synthetic biology to the next level of complexity: engineering mammalian cells. Indeed, the judges were impressed…they named these teams two of the three finalists.

The team from Princeton worked with mouse embryonic stem cells to get one set of cells to direct the differentiation of embryonic stem cells. And the team from Slovenia (a country which declared independence from Yugoslavia in 1991) worked with human cells to engineer a key signaling pathway involved in the immune system response. Often that response gets out of hand, causing massive inflammation. This can lead to sepsis, which kills thousands of people every year. So the team introduced a feedback loop into the pathway to provide better control over that response.

And the winner was: the Slovenia team. On stage at MIT’s Kresge auditorium, to a standing ovation, the 10-member team was presented with a large “biobrick”, a metal block that looked like a giant Lego piece.

Who knows, those students on stage today could one day be leading the charge in the nascent field of synthetic biology. If anyone is looking for a fun way to jump start a new field of research by exciting and attracting smart young students, they should take a look at IGEM.