students and their lasting violet scent, first in an international competition on biology
They did it ! Romane Ducloux, Thomas Gaudin, Margaux Haon, Maxence Holtz, Camille Pin and Manon Theys hissed at first place in the international iGEM 2021 competition in the category under 23. Supervised by researchers and doctoral students from Toulouse Biotechnology Institute, of Integrative Biology Center in Toulouse and Plant Science Research Laboratory, these six students from Toulouse have achieved the unthinkable.
First in front of 350 teams from around the world
Initially organized by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Fr 2003, this competition on synthetic biology sees students compete against each other from more than 40 countries in the world. The results of this 2021 edition fell this Sunday 14 November 2021. A first stage of selection “to know if we were nominated for certain prizes” took place wednesday 10 november come explain it Manon Theys, one of the six students of the Toulouse team:
To our surprise, we were nominated for five awards and were among the three finalists in our category. We had already won. It was pretty amazing. It was rewarding for all the work we had done. On Sunday, on one had the final results. We were in a room with the whole team. On one looked at the results together and on a leap of joy. On a shouted in the room. It was an incredible moment with a lot of emotions “.
First French team to reach first place
“We would never have thought to arrive at the first place”, says with pride Brice Enjalbert, research professor at the TBI. This is the first time since the creation of the competition thata French team reaches first place in the under 23 category. “The only team that had managed to climb in the list was Paris in 2012”, explains the manager. >> READ ALSO : With their nutritious yeasts for astronauts, Toulouse students take the podium of an international biology competition
“They had finished third. Last year, Toulouse managed to reach second place in the competition, which was totally unexpected given the grappling hook there was on it. We did not expect to go so high.” Composed of two students fromToulouse-III-Paul-Sabatier University and four of theINSA, the Toulouse team has slipped into the middle of the best schools in the world. She managed to beat her Toulouse colleagues in the 2020 edition. Brice Enjalbert Explain :
In this competition, there are all the best schools and universities in the world that participate and when I say the best schools, there is Harvard, Princeton, Oxford, Cambridge… And this year, they had even more pressure compared to that . What the hell were they gonna be able to do? Because the only possible place was the first. Well, they did. “
A violet fragrance created in a “more ecological” way
The six students for a year now on how to achieve “more sustainable” violet perfume production like Camille Pin explained it to The Independent Opinion last July. At present, this perfume is petrochemically created. “The cultures intended for the production of perfume of violets were stopped. It was not commendable”, specified Camille Pin. The young people of Toulouse have thus succeeded in designing a production system between two microorganisms: a yeast and a cyanobacterium.
“They reproduce the most important molecules of the perfume of the violet. Thanks to the light and the CO2, the cyanobacterium develops and produces what feed the yeast. This one pushes and produces CO2 to feed the first organism “, details Camille Pin. But before succeeding in this, the team worked hard. The phase of experiments ended. end of September. Once these tests were completed, it was necessary to leave room for formatting. The student details:
After that, we had a period where we should value our results. As per, make a website where they should be available to everyone and a big 20 minute video that can sum it all up “.
>> READ ALSO : Toulouse: students want to produce a lasting violet scent
The subject brought up by the students does not stop there. This biotechnological process could be used on a large scale as is currently under discussion with the TBI. The company Robertet a Fat, one of the team’s sponsors, notably mentioned his interest in the concept of more ecological production of the violet fragrance.