Cairo University created iGEM’s first all-Egyptian student team for a project on desalination – a team that has made considerable progress with the help of Opentrons.
One of the founding principles of iGEM is that successful experiments require a global perspective. As such, iGEM has been encouraging student teams to leverage synthetic biology tools to improve their communities and the global environment. However, like scientists around the world, they are often challenged and troubled by the world around them.
Cairo University’s iGEM Team is proof of this. The 10-member team won sponsorship from Opentrons for their project to address the water shortage issue faced by the community. However, while addressing water scarcity, they also face socioeconomic barriers that limit research support. Their experiences remind us that for many scientists, progress remains a rare privilege rather than a right taken for granted.
We share their stories to express our support for scientists facing the same challenges as the Cairo team and to remind our community that democratizing science is an ongoing process that requires not only resilience but also collaboration.
Turn adversity into advantage
Support for scientific projects in Egypt is very limited due to a lack of funding, resources and personnel, especially in the field of synthetic biology. To participate in iGEM 2019, the Cairo team spent nearly two years learning synthetic biology from scratch, reaching out to professionals in the field for resources and guidance.
Although Egypt has sent teams to iGEM before, 2019 was the first time an Egyptian team worked with students from across Egypt in one location.
The second major hurdle facing the Cairo team was raising funds. Nature Middle East reports that Egypt is financially prioritizing high-risk issues that need to be addressed immediately , rather than laboratory studies. The result is that the public and governments portray scientists as unrealistic idealists whose work takes years to prove its worth. As they sought to address water scarcity, the Cairo team initially sought funding outside the agency. But they are forced to seek institutional support because of the country's misinterpretation of laboratory research. While they are able to receive financial support from university presidents, they still need to pay iGEM registration fees. iGEM charges an $850 registration fee per team member, and the Cairo team’s registration fees totaled more than their university faculty’s tuition. It took them four months to get their registration fees paid, during which time the team worked on designing a synthetic biology solution to Egypt's water shortages.
Desalination in water-scarce environments
When the Cairo team discovered that Egypt's third largest freshwater lake had turned into a salt lake, they decided to focus their project on desalination.
They decided to genetically modify the salt-tolerant yeast Debaryomyces hansenii, a naturally occurring marine microorganism that absorbs salt from lake water and prevents it from entering the environment. They hope this will reduce salt concentrations in the water and serve as a pre-treatment step for existing desalination infrastructure.
The team devised a two-pronged approach to their desalination efforts. First, they removed the efflux channels in the yeast responsible for eliminating toxins, preventing them from releasing salt back into the water. They also introduced osmoprotectants into the cells to maintain their integrity at high salinity. Their second approach involves finding metal-binding proteins with sodium and chloride ion affinities to introduce binding domains and anchor the proteins to salt, allowing for faster desalination.
See success from a different perspective
The Cairo team hopes to use the OT-2 pipetting platform to genetically modify yeast. However, due to customs issues, the team only received the OT-2 a few weeks before flying to Boston. DNA sequences needed to genetically modify the yeast, Twist Biosciences' resources to manipulate the yeast to tolerate high salinity, and iGEM kits were also held up at customs.
Because of these delays, the Cairo team has made limited progress. They did manage to engineer the yeast to retain salt for up to an hour before the cells release it again. They are also making progress in identifying the optimal proteins and binding agents for desalting.
But the limited progress does not negate their hard work on the project.
The Cairo team’s efforts as young scientists in various aspects to participate in iGEM 2019 echo the work of many other scientists around the world. They were ecstatic to attend and took every difficulty as a lesson. Their ability to overcome obstacles and learn from them allowed them to succeed, even if they didn't achieve everything they had hoped for in the lab.
At Opentrons, we fully support the democratization of science to support scientists around the world. Opentrons advances science for scientists around the world by providing low-cost, high-quality automated pipetting platforms and providing open source materials that eliminate financial constraints faced by scientific research teams... But even with this help, scientists like the Cairo team still need More help. Examples include suppliers willing to offer more affordable prices, non-profit organizations willing to provide support and guidance, and more collaborations between universities and government agencies.
We still have a long way to go before we can democratize science. But we're excited to do our part and give a voice to young biologists like the Cairo team. We hope we can inspire other scientists to do the same.
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