pune a sevenmember team of the university of punes uop fiveyear integrated msc biotechnology course outclassed their more established counterparts from globallyrenowned universities to win a bronze medal at the annual international geneticallyengineered machines igem competition at the massachusetts institute of technology mit boston in us recently the gold and the silver medals went to the cambridge university uk and the heidelberg university germany respectivelythe igem ranks among the most prestigious research competitions for undergraduate biotechnology students who work on genetic engineering of dna molecules to build useful and standard biological parts ie synthetic dna molecules called biobricks these designed parts biobricks being simple interchangeable and universal can be used in biological living systems like bacteria and can be made as a living machine with applications in fields as varied as medicine agriculture industry and environment besides furthering scientific research the uop team which developed 26 biobricks had submitted a research project to the mit in march dealing with the firstever attempt of using biological system bacteria for stimulating the simplest computational module involving human celltocell signalling principle this has wideranging applications for development of futuristic super biocomputers said b a chopade head institute of bioinformatics and biotechnology ibb at uop the research has now been incorporated in the igem parts registry for use by scientists anywhere in the world on an open access basis puneparts presenting the medalwinning team to the media on thursday uops officiating vicechancellor arun adsool said a part of the overall research work was not disclosed even at the competition owing to intellectual property rights ipr issues as the team is now seeking a us patent for its work the team members swetha srinivasan mandar pathak samit watve chinar patil amrita oak sharvari sathe and rahul bhosale were led by advisors chopade and phd research fellow praveen k sahu to the mit for a presentation during the contest from october 29 to november 2 according to pandit vidyasagar director of uops board of college and university development the teams performance provides a tangible result of the firstofitskind fiveyear integrated msc biotechnology study programme that was introduced by the uop in the state the then vicechancellor ashok kolaskar was instrumental in launching the integrated biotech degree courseapart from the team ibbuop the indian institutes of technology iits at mumbai and chennai and the national centre for biological sciences bangalore were the other indian institutes which were part of the prestigious contest involving a total of 110 teams from 25 countries renowned varsities like harvard standford purdue chicago john hopkins illinois london paris tokyo and bristol among others were also part of the competition