Chennai engineering college students win gold at international competition

The team of Rajalakshmi Engineering College developed a laboratory solution to remove toxins from industrial effluents

A team of students from the Rajalakshmi Engineering College, Chennai, have won the gold medal at the iGEM 2022 contest.

The team developed a laboratory solution to remove toxins from industrial effluents.

Gayathri Vijayakumar, associate professor of Biotechnology in the college, which is affiliated to the Anna University, said International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) Foundation, an independent, non-profit organisation, held the competition in synthetic biology.

Twenty-five students worked on the project which was part of the environment track. The contest was held at Porte de Versailles, France, in October. The college’s project was among the five shortlisted from across the world.

Called Curlim, the project aimed to remove toxic cadmium ions from industry effluents using genetic engineering and synthetic biology tools. The team genetically engineered escerichia coli bacteria and modified its DNA. The bacteria can precipitate cadmium ions from the effluent (wastewater from industries) by expressing the enzyme acid phosphatase on the membrane, Ms. Gayathri said.

“We got the best environment track award. Under the environmental track, 50 teams from across the world submitted projects. From India, there were 14 teams – 12 were from national institutes like IITs, IISER and IISc Bengaluru. The two private entries were from VIT Vellore and Rajalakhsmi Engineering College, Chennai,” she added.

The shortlisted teams included those from the USA, the UK, Lithuania, China and India.