Today we’d like to introduce you to East Coast Bio Crew.
Hello East Coast Bio Crew, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
We are BUGSS (The Baltimore Underground Science Space), a nonprofit community biology lab based in Baltimore. We aim to make synthetic biology accessible to people from all backgrounds by offering classes and seminars for people of all ages who are interested in this field. We also provide a lab space for independent and graduate researchers to conduct experiments. By educating the public about synthetic biology, we hope to increase interest, dispel myths, and expand opportunities in this field.
One of the main ways in which we do this is with our International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition high school team. Every year since 2016, around 30 high schoolers from Maryland and Virginia come together to research a project and produce a result using synthetic biology to present at the iGEM competition. It is a great way to encourage and inspire young people to become engaged in the opportunities offered by this field. Recently our team has merged with members of the community lab Genspace in New York City, forming the East Coast Biocrew.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
The first obstacle we faced was concluding what problem we were trying to tackle with our project. As a team divided into two community labs in different states communicating has been one of the problems we have faced.
– Time and coordination with both labs.
– Deciding and concluding our project.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
Our project was aimed at tackling eutrophication in our waterways due to agricultural pollution. One of the largest contributors to this pollution is phosphate (Chesapeake Bay Foundation). As much as 80% of the phosphate in fertilizers is lost as runoff because it has a high affinity for binding with other environmental pollutants, such as minerals and heavy metals. This binding process renders the phosphate inaccessible to the majority of plants.
We plan to have a two-pronged approach. First, we want to uptake more phosphate to prevent it from reaching our waterways. Second, we want to solubilize the mineral phosphate to make it more available to plants.
Over the summer, we were able to successfully insert new genes into our bacteria, Rhizobium tropici, and we had promising results from a series of phosphate tests that support the efficacy of our project.
We plan to implement our project using the support of organizations focused on helping local ecosystems. We already have spoken to several officials in the local government, educators, professors, and local farm owners to get their input for our project. We would love for local groups to utilize our project to help themselves and the world around them.
Is there anyone you’d like to thank or give credit to?
All our mentors, including Dr. Lisa Scheifele, Dr. Jake Bibik, Eric Ezenwanne, Sarah Grace Ho, Nina Rajpurohit, Kelsey Shimoda, and Lydia Stamato.
They guided us, both teaching us the lab and science skills we needed to accomplish our project and acting as a reliable resource throughout our project. They inspired us to pursue an ambitious project to help our community.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://2023.igem.wiki/eastcoastbiocrew/
- Instagram: @eastcoastbiocrew_igem
- Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/p/BUGSS-Baltimore-Under-Ground-Science-Space-100076722108586/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bugss-baltimore-underground-science-space-943b98b9
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/BUGSSlab?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauth
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@BUGSSlab/videos
- Other: https://bugssonline.org/
