How Can Synthetic Biology Help Us Grow?

The iGEM team from Makerere University in Uganda faced seemingly insurmountable challenges in their research on plastic degradation. They had little previous lab experience and their university lacked the supplies and infrastructure to support their project. Even with sponsorships from Promega and several other biotechnology companies, they struggled to gather the funding necessary to get through the competition. Nonetheless, when I met team leader Alex Kyabarongo, he was optimistic about the future of synthetic biology research in Uganda.

“We want to extend this to the community,” Alex told me during the iGEM Giant Jamboree. “We want to remove the negativity around bacteria and tell people, ‘Look! There are bacteria that are deadly, and bacteria that are helpful. How can they be helpful?’ And I believe we have managed to establish our roots.”

When Makerere University Masters student Otim Geoffery heard about iGEM, he saw it as an invaluable opportunity to give more Ugandan students the chance to experience cutting-edge scientific research. iGEM, or the International Genetically Engineered Machine Competition, challenges students to use synthetic biology to address a problem they see in the world. Teams propose a project in the spring, spend the summer conducting experiments and gathering data, and present their accomplishments at the Giant Jamboree in the fall.

The organization has made slow progress in recruiting teams from Africa. According to the “Previous Competitions” page on the iGEM website, nearly 2,500 teams have competed since 2005, but only ten of those represented the entire continent of Africa. When Otim founded the Makerere University team in early 2018, it was the first team from Uganda and only the second African team from outside of Egypt or South Africa.

Otim designated himself as the team’s instructor and recruited fifteen students to participate. Most of the team studied either Veterinary Medicine or Biomedical Laboratory Technology. At the team’s first meeting, third-year veterinary medicine student Alex Kyabarongo was elected Team Leader. (“He is a genius,” Otim later declared.)

“We learn theory but gain little practice,” Alex told me, “So for me, as a student, I see it as a dream to practice this and to look for challenges and solve them. The biggest problem in Uganda right now is plastic disposal. People handle plastics with combustion, and we are looking at how we can degrade the plastic without burning it.”

In their project proposal, Alex and his team described plans to engineer E. coli with two genes from Ideonella sakaiensis, a bacterium that was shown in 2016 to digest polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic. PET is one of the primary pollutants in Uganda, often in the form of bottles and other consumer materials. The pair of enzymes Alex’s team identified is sufficient for hydrolyzing PET into its two environmentally safe monomers, terephthalic acid and ethylene glycol. The team believed that their project would result in a cheap, hassle-free method of dealing with the large amounts of plastic polluting their country.

Unfortunately, the team struggled to make progress in the lab work. Few of the team members had any prior lab experience, and they were often held up by broken or missing lab equipment. They reached out to other teams on Twitter asking for help, and eventually set up Skype sessions with teams representing at least four different countries. According to the Makerere wiki, these conversations were productive for planning lab work, learning how to use equipment and navigating the complex requirements and deadlines associated with the iGEM competition. I later learned from other teams that the Makerere team would often end up giving more help than they received, usually by supporting other teams' projects with epidemiological or sociological research that was infeasible for teams outside of Uganda. 

The team began cloning their genes on August 20, several months later than most teams begin experiments. They still lacked some of the necessary supplies, but they had assembled as much as it seemed they could. By late September, they were analyzing E. coli cultures to search for PETase and MHETase expression, but their cells didn’t seem to be producing the proteins. With only a month to go before the competition, the team began evaluating every step of the process.

“A lot of brainstorming, a lot of troubleshooting, asking, ‘Why is it not expressing as well as we want?’” Alex said. “We were getting results, just not very good results. We finally found what it was—most of the gene was wrong.”

Alex didn’t disclose many details about the issues, but he told me that an unnoticed error in one of their orders from another biotechnology company had derailed their experiments and left them with results far from what they were hoping for. He also mentioned that he was talking to a representative from the company to figure out how the order could be corrected so that the team could continue their project after iGEM ended.

When the deadline for adding information to their wiki page on the iGEM website arrived, the Makerere team had little data to report. In lieu of concrete results, they posted background information about pollution in Uganda and details about their collaborations and outreach. Having only raised enough money to send one team member to the Giant Jamboree, the team decided to send Alex to represent them in Boston.

And so, in late October 2018, Alex Kyabarongo left Uganda for the first time in his life, alone, to travel over 28 hours to Boston, Massachusetts.

When the Jamboree started, Alex was in the middle of everything that was happening. He connected with collaborators and teams he’d communicated with on social media. I saw him networking with representatives from biotechnology companies and instructors from prestigious universities. He brought a natural charm to every conversation, sparking smiles and laughter from everyone. By the end of the first day, every time I saw him, he was introducing me to a new friend he thought I’d like to meet.

Alex was scheduled to give his presentation to the judges at 10:00am on the second day of the Jamboree. I got to the conference room half an hour early, and Alex was already inside, practicing his slides one last time. He was dressed in a pale-yellow polo shirt with his team’s logo embroidered on the chest. No one else in the room bothered him or even sat next to him, respecting his last-minute cramming. He stared intently at his screen, oblivious to the presentations going on around him. As it approached 10:00, dozens of other iGEM participants streamed into the room. By the time Alex stepped on stage, almost every seat in the room was taken.

“Good morning to you all,” Alex began, speaking to a crowd of over fifty. “This is the iGEM team from Makerere University in Uganda, in East Africa. This is our first time presenting to iGEM. You see me here, alone, but my whole team contributed to the same cause.”

In the next sixteen minutes, Alex painted a vivid picture of his university struggling from a lack of resources, his city drowning under mountains of plastic, and his team fighting to succeed in iGEM. He talked about the disadvantages East African scientists face without easy access to the tools of research, and the uphill battle to convince an overwhelmingly skeptical community that bacteria can, in fact, be helpful. He showed pictures of his teammates meeting with politicians, government officials, scientists and other students at Makerere University. Alex never attempted to mask his lack of data, rather, he thoroughly explained his team’s shortcomings and detailed their plans to continue the project after the Jamboree.  He concluded by thanking the team’s sponsors and giving shoutouts to several collaborators in the audience.

“In the coming years, I want to see us expand our team,” Alex told the judges. “Our team was mostly composed of veterinarians who had little knowledge about biotechnology. But we did our best, and I know that next time we come, we will be better.”

When the presentation and Q&A ended, the applause was deafening. Immediately afterwards, over two dozen people lined up in front of the podium where Alex was standing. As I listened from nearby, I realized they weren’t questioning him on the project or his lack of data. Many of them just wanted to shake his hand, congratulate him, and offer any support the team needed to continue their research and return to iGEM in 2019. Alex greeted most of them like old friends, including representatives from collaborators and sponsors.

“He did well – he did really well!” Hamburg team member Bjarne Klopprogge told me afterwards. “I worked on the collaboration with iGEM Makerere for our team. They really helped us develop our project working on malaria. They told us personal stories, distributed our questionnaire in Uganda, connected us with epidemiologists and people in the lab, and this way we got a lot of input.”

“We hope we helped them a bit, but they definitely did much more for us than we did for them,” said Daniel Wedemeyer, another member of the Hamburg team.

The Makerere iGEM team exemplified many of the principles valued by the iGEM foundation and scientists around the world: collaboration, open communication, teamwork and friendly competition. They overcame unique challenges and achieved unprecedented recognition on the global stage. Though the iGEM season didn’t have the outcome he’d hoped for, Alex remains dedicated to his goal of bringing cutting-edge biology to Uganda. More than anything, he reminded me that science can—and should—be used to solve the problems we see in our own communities.

“We see synthetic biology and ask, ‘how can it help us grow?’” he told me. “This is just the beginning of how synthetic biology can help solve the challenges for humans, animals, and living in the environment.”

If this is the beginning for Alex, I can’t wait to see what comes next.