Opentrons and iGEM are pleased to announce a partnership to bring the power of low-cost, open-source automation and reproducible protocols to teams shaping the future of science and engineering. Together with the work of the iGEM Measurement Committee and Interlab Measurement Research, this partnership will enable the team to continue
Opentrons and iGEM are pleased to announce a partnership to bring the power of low-cost, open-source automation and reproducible protocols to teams shaping the future of science and engineering. Together with the work of the iGEM Measurement Committee and the Interlaboratory Measurement Study, this partnership will allow the team to continue to advance the frontiers of measurement and reproducibility in synthetic biology.
Through this first-of-its-kind partnership, Opentrons will select 10 iGEM teams to receive OT-2 robots for free. Additionally, all iGEM 2018 teams are eligible for a $2,000 discount on their first robot throughout the 2018 season.
The iGEM team involved in Interlab's measurement studies are pioneers in reproducible experiments, setting a higher standard for reproducibility for all types of life science labs, iGEM teams and synthetic biology professionals. Improving scientific reproducibility is also part of Opentrons' core mission. We believe that replicating laboratory experimental results should be as easy as downloading a protocol and running it on a robot. That’s why it’s such a good fit for Opentrons and iGEM to work together – we can move toward new reproducibility standards faster than we could alone.
Equipped with the robots and modules needed to run protocols for transformation, ligation, digestion, and more, our chosen iGEM team will be able to test our thesis that running experiments on a common automation platform can improve reproducibility between laboratories. The data generated by these teams and the protocols and open source integrations they produce will make important contributions to the wider scientific community and will inform Opentrons' future product roadmap.
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About OPENTRONS
Opentrons are making automation robustness and reproducibility accessible to any laboratory. Our latest product is the most affordable high-precision laboratory robot ever made: the OT-2.
With its easy-to-use hardware and open source software platform, Opentrons enables scientists (and students!) to collaborate more, easily reproduce each other's results, and discover biotech solutions to the world's most pressing problems faster. We are democratizing biology and increasing reproducibility through a library of crowdsourced validation protocols developed by leading scientists at the world's top institutions, including Stanford, MIT, and the Mayo Clinic.
After working with the Genspace iGEM team to test the first prototypes, we announced our first-generation robot, OT-One, at iGEM’s Giant Jamboree in 2014. We are very excited to be partnering with the iGEM Foundation again to provide lab robots to their student-led teams!
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About IGEM
The iGEM (International Genetically Engineered Machines) Foundation is an independent, non-profit organization dedicated to advancing synthetic biology education through competition, developing open communities and collaborations, and educating the workforce of the future. The main project of iGEM is the iGEM Competition. Through this, iGEM provides thousands of students with the opportunity to push the boundaries of biology technology as teams are challenged to create projects that are safe, responsible, and beneficial to the world. iGEM ??is about local people solving local problems everywhere. The new After iGEM program is designed to inspire, support and inspire the more than 30,000 iGEM employees to continue to lead the field of synthetic biology, wherever they are based.
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About the 5th International Interlaboratory Measurement Study
Over the past few years, iGEM has advanced the frontiers of science through the largest interlaboratory study ever conducted in the field of synthetic biology. The goal of these studies is to improve the measurement tools available to the iGEM community and the synthetic biology community at large. They have now been published as an open access journal article in PLOS ONE.
2018 marks the fifth year of the international InterLab measurement study. The goal of this study is to identify and correct sources of systematic variability in synthetic biology measurements so that ultimately measurements made in different laboratories do not vary more than measurements made in the same laboratory. Until we reach this point, synthetic biology will not be able to reach its full potential as an engineering discipline because laboratories will not be able to reliably build on the work of others. To learn more about current and past reproducibility research, visit the 2018 InterLab page. To learn more about how the Opentrons program is helping to achieve this goal, visit the Opentrons Sponsorship page on the iGEM website.
We hope that by adding laboratory automation, the iGEM team will be able to achieve higher levels of reproducibility with unprecedented ease. Please continue to pay attention to the results of our cooperation!
Opentrons Contact: Kristin Ellis, Director of Scientific Development, [email protected]
iGEM ??Contact: Meagan Lizarazo, Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, [email protected]
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