Students at Shenzhen Polytechnic (SZPT) are once again proudly holding gold medals as winners of this year’s International Genetically Engineered Machine Competition (iGEM), which took place on a livestream earlier this month. This is the second time the SZPT team has won gold at the competition. The team received their first gold medal last year.

The team’s winning project was designed to detect and prevent tooth decay. With 333 days of hard work, the team members had constructed an extracorporeal Escherichia coli detecting system, built a portable device to cultivate lactic acid bacteria that could prevent tooth decay, and developed a special type of chewing gum with the bacteria.

The iGEM was founded by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is a top-level science competition for university students in the field of synthetic biology. Teams competing in this year’s competition included students from Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Oxford University, Heidelberg University and many others. (Lin Lin)