Gold Medal for the Technion Team at the iGEM Competition

A team from the Technion recently won a gold medal and second place in the Inclusivity Award category in iGEM – the world’s largest and most prestigious event in the field of synthetic biology. The medal and award were granted for the team’s development of an innovative technology for producing stem bromelain, an enzyme that plays an important role in medicine, agriculture, and in the cosmetics, food, and textile industries.

This year’s prestigious competition was held in Paris, with the participation of more than 400 student teams from around the world. The Technion team includes students from various faculties, with the project coordinated by the Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Engineering.

The project presented by the Technion team focuses on the synthetic production of stem bromelain. Bromelain is a complex mixture of enzymes, the main one being stem bromelain. Currently, bromelain is extracted from pineapple stems – a process that is expensive, inefficient, and dependent on plant availability and climatic conditions.

To address these challenges, the Technion team developed a system for producing stem bromelain in genetically engineered cells, integrating computational modeling and artificial intelligence. This approach simplifies production and purification processes and could significantly increase bromelain’s commercial availability.

The iGEM competition was established in 2004 at MIT to give students, primarily undergraduates, the opportunity to engage in applied scientific research in the field of synthetic biology. The first Israeli team was formed at the Technion in 2012 under the guidance of Prof. Roee Amit from the Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Engineering, who continues to mentor the Technion team. The current achievement joins a series of previous awards won by Technion teams in iGEM competitions.

In the photo: Members of the Technion team – May Ofek (team leader), Elinor Mor, Dekel Gibor, Noam Almog, Lihi Lavidor, Ofry Nothmann, Matilda Kuliminsky, and Roni Vaizer (all from the Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Engineering), Leeyam Bat-El (dual degree in Biomedical Engineering and Physics), and Ofri Leifer (Heny and Marilyn Taub Faculty of Computer Science).

Watch the video describing the project – here