Eighteen years after its inception, the international Genetically Engineered Machine competition has catalyzed the infusion of synthetic biology with interdisciplinary fundamental and translational research, as well as with inspired young scientists.
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Acknowledgements
The authors thank G. Uttmark for feedback on the manuscript and the rest of the Academia & Research Committee, along with the After iGEM team and iGEM Foundation, for useful conversations, insights and support that helped in shaping this work and manuscript. A.K.J. is supported by the Clarendon Fund, a SKP scholarship, Exeter College and the Interdisciplinary Bioscience DTP at the University of Oxford (UKRI–BBSRC grant no. BB/M011224/1). R.R.S. acknowledges the Mexican National Council for Science and Technology (CONACYT, grant no. 472427), Cambridge Trust and the EPSRC CDT in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (NanoDTC, grant no. EP/L015978/1).
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A.K.J. and R.R.S. designed this study and its implementation. A.K.J. mined the data supported by A.S. and S.S. A.K.J. and R.R.S. performed data cross-validation aided by A.G., A.M.N. and G.E.K. All authors discussed, analyzed and interpreted the data. R.R.S. prepared the manuscript with help of the other authors.
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G.E.K. works as an independent consultant for the iGEM Foundation.
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Jainarayanan, A.K., Galanis, A., Sreejith, A. et al. iGEM comes of age: trends in its research output. Nat Biotechnol 39, 1599–1601 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-021-01152-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-021-01152-7
