Over the last years the iGEM competition has been extremely efficient in stimulating participation of young scientists in synthetic biology research, and it has yielded many interesting and surprising concepts and applications.
BACIP promotes the use of bacilli in iGEM. Student teams that work with Bacillus seeking sponsorship may send in a summary of their project. BACIP will look at industrial attractiveness, applicability, and originality of the work and, based on its assessment, BACIP grants up to three sponsoring grants of €1,000 for each selected team annually.
Requests for grants are open from January until the 1st of May each year. Grant winners will be highlighted on the BACIP website. To this end, they will be requested to provide a summary of their work and link to their website.
On behalf of BACIP,
Tjeerd van Rij
BACIP proudly sponsored iGEM Team Pyricon from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. They aimed aim to replace conventional cement with sustainable biocement. They engineerd Bacillus subtilis to produce spider silk proteins and combine them with Solibacillus silvestris that promote microbially induced calcite precipitation, forming a durable, sustainable biocement. This microbial approach avoids high-temperature processing, directly reducing CO₂ emissions.
