This week, we take you inside the Cornel iGEM lab to explore how we students design and build synthetic biology projects for the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition. Join us to learn how genetic engineering, lab workflows, and biotech innovation come together in a student research environment.

A special thank you to Stan Cho, Aaryaa Chiney, Christian Fonkalsrud, Parth Patel, and Sylvia Park for their appearance on this episode!

DNA is what we are all about at iGEM. But... what is DNA, anyways? This week, we take you through a crash course on DNA for genetic engineering and synthetic biology. We're breaking it down into the key concepts you’ll need to follow everything that comes next in our iGEM series.

Whether you’re brand new to biology or just need a refresher, this episode is designed to give you the essential toolkit for understanding how we design and build biological systems in iGEM. We’ll keep things accessible, practical, and focused on what actually matters for engineering biology.

By the end of this episode, you’ll have a solid grasp of the core pieces, (DNA, RNA, proteins, and gene regulation) that power everything we’ll explore in the rest of the series.

Welcome to the GENE-IUS Podcast. Episodes released weekly! We will be exploring genetic engineering and synthetic biology. Join us for our first series: "iGEM ABC's: A Biology (Crash) Course)", where we will take you through the biology behind iGEM with help from the Cornell iGEM Wet Lab Team.