Summer STEM Spotlight: IGEM

This summer, four tri-school students spent time in a lab attempting to solve a problem through genetic engineering: reversing the internal hair damage from bleach. They were working with the IGEM competition, which has a team located at the Baltimore Underground Science Space (BUGSS) consisting of Asad Zaheer ‘28, Grayson Bess ‘29, Arveen Kazemnia ‘27, Brie Darby ‘28, along with several other students from outside the tri-schools.

IGEM is an annual international competition where teams research and design products using genetic engineering to solve problems. The teams work on their respective projects over the summer and then present them at a conference in November. This conference has taken place in various locations, with this year’s in Paris. 

Aside from the traditional roles in the lab, which involve producing assay designs and taking notes, there are several other jobs. For example, those who are not as keen on setting up computational biology experiments or manufacturing materials for those experiments can work on the wiki or graphics design subteams, which specialize in creating the website, team branding, and social media content. People can work in multiple subteams at once. Although there are a variety of subteams, most of the work is done in the lab. Asad remarked, “I do a lot of computational biology, like protein stimulation. I find the best proteins to use, the best peptides. I did some lab work and designed assays. It’s like a test. So we’re designing a test to see if it will stick to the hair.“

The product the BUGSS team created is a hair dye that reverses damage caused by bleach. There are specific peptides that bind to the keratin in the hair, which are attached to the chromoproteins that dye the hair by using a glycine-alanine peptide to extend the length of the chain of the structure. By placing that protein on the hair, it can fill in the places where the hair has been damaged by bleach.

Although this program will take up a lot of time and individual effort over the summer, it is definitely worth it. Grayson stated, “I have really enjoyed the IGEM experience and would definitely like to do it again if I had the opportunity.”