
Image: Oxford University iGEM team 2024 at the iGEM Jamboree, Paris.
Back row (L-R) Dmitry Lukyanov (3rd Year Biochemistry), Dr Hafez El Sayyed (Project PI), Aritra Saha (3rd Year Biochemistry), Devon Darley (3rd Year Biomedical Sciences).
Front row (L-R) Eunice Ho (2nd Year Biology), Julia Tondera (3rd Year Biochemistry).
Not pictured: Vedat Habib Papo (2nd Year Biochemist)
Last month, six undergraduate students from the University of Oxford won gold at the 2024 iGEM competition in Paris for their project on antimicrobial resistance (AMR) titled OneRing.
The Ineos Oxford Institute for antimicrobial resistance supported the team with funds to take part in the competition and attend the iGEM jamboree conference.
The International Genetically Engineered Machine, or iGEM, is a global synthetic biology competition tackling humanity’s most pressing problems. Over 400 multidisciplinary teams from more than 45 countries showcased their synthetic biology solutions in areas of Healthcare, Environment, and Advancements.
The Oxford University team developed a blueprint for novel type of antimicrobials based on plasmids delivering a lethal cargo to target pathogenic bacteria.
Plasmids are small circular pieces of DNA that move between bacteria in a process called conjugation. The team selected the RP4 plasmid which can be delivered to both gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria, increasing its therapeutic potential against a range of pathogens.
Conjugative plasmids can be exploited to deliver gene editing components called CRISPR-Cas12a to manipulate bacterial genomes. The team focused specifically on how to target genes that are specific to pathogenic strains to disrupt growth of harmful bacteria.
The students explained, “We wanted to develop an antimicrobial system that targeted bacteria with strain-specificity on a genomic level, to avoid killing ‘good’ bacteria in the body, for example in the gut microbiome.”
The team ultimately developed a single broad-range plasmid (the ONERING plasmid) that successfully targeted five different bacterial strains. In addition to eliminating four strains of bacteria, they were able to re-sensitise an amplicillin-resistant E.coli strain to the antibiotic ampicillin by targeting the beta-lactamase gene.
The students’ next steps are focused on optimizing the OneRing systems to be used in microbiome environment, particularly developing potential delivery systems for the plasmid, for example as a food supplement like probiotics.
Their long-term goal would be to build a production pipeline to quickly design and synthesise OneRing plasmids targeting specific set of pathogens, making it highly customisable to target bacteria specific to the geographic location, farms, and even individual animals.
Awarded a gold medal for their efforts, the team were also nominated for Best Project in the Infectious Diseases category, the only undergraduate team to be recognised.
iGEM has been invaluable to put into practice lab skills and techniques we learn throughout our degrees. Most importantly we honed our troubleshooting skills to methodically and creatively combat the problems that arose through our project.
The rich synthetic biology community which iGEM introduced us to will greatly benefit us, as we were exposed to so many innovative ideas and applications that challenge us to push the boundaries of what is possible in the field of synthetic biology.

The team would like to thank:
- Their Principal Investigator Dr Hafez El Sayyed, Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of Physics, for his immense support
- Ineos Oxford Institute for antimicrobial research for their financial support to attend the iGEM Jamboree
- The Kapandis Lab for providing lab space, training and consumables
- Alfredas Bukys, DPhil student, for providing fluorescent E.coli strains
- The Department of Biochemistry and Medical Sciences Division for financial assistance
- ThermoFisher Scientific
- New England BioLabs
- SnapGene
- Twist Bioscience