iGEM Jamboree: leap into the synthetic biology future

Synthetic biology (SynBio) has stopped dividing itself by categories — red, yellow, green, blue, white — medicine, environment, agriculture, water, and industry —and is now united as one movement, working toward a single purpose: redesigning life for a better future.

The field, which involves the redesigning of organisms through methods such as genetic engineering and DNA sequencing, had an estimated market size of $20.01 billion last year, and it is only poised to grow.

At the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) and the SB8.0 Conference, which took place in Paris on October 30th, 2025, it was clear that synthetic biology is no longer a niche. Instead, it’s what happens when engineering learns how to breathe through biology.

From plants that eat plastic and yeast that brews medicine at the Grand Jamboree, to SB8.0’s industry talks about the future of SynBio, artificial intelligence (AI) and designer enzymes, there was a lot to learn in Paris last week. 

Greentech’s quiet rebellion at iGEM 2025

At iGEM 2025, greentech took center stage with the iGEM team Brno winning the Overgrad Grand Prize. They turned Lemna minor (common duckweed) into a programmable protein factory. Their Duckweed Toolbox combined three pillars of next-generation plant biotech.

TAIFR, a transformation protocol that accelerates stable duckweed engineering fivefold; the CULTIVATOR, a self-driving growth unit that monitors, harvests, and optimizes biomass; and the PREDICTOR, an AI model that learns the metabolic rhythms of the plant to fine-tune yield. Their vision is pragmatic: replace imported soybean feed with locally grown duckweed, cutting deforestation and emissions while creating a circular bio-feed economy. 

Other impressive projects were just across the hall. The KU Leuven iGEM team built  ‘Phytoblock’, cacao bioshields that protect leaves from fungal infections using engineered elicitors, while TEC-Chihuahua encapsulated anti-fungal peptides in chitosan microparticles to prevent bean crop losses. Chitosan is derived from chitin, which is found in the shells of sea creatures, and the microparticles of chitosan are used as carriers in drug and vaccine delivery systems. 

Moreover, a high school team from Thailand created ‘Plants vs. PET’, demonstrating how Nicotiana benthamiana – a close relative of the tobacco plant – can express PETase, an enzyme that breaks down plastics, in its apoplast. The apoplast is a network of plant cells that make up the cell walls, and so, the enzyme’s expression in these cells help form a biological filter against plastic waste. Such prototypes share a new and common logic: containment as innovation. Instead of fighting regulations, students design within them. In Europe’s cautious ecosystem, this shift is profound, and safety isn’t a burden.

Greentech’s rebellion isn’t about scaling faster than petrochemistry but about redefining growth itself. As Sibylle Jäger from L’Oréal’s Green Science Incubator put it, plants can be biofactories, not plantations. The future of Greentech is producing without extraction, evolving within limits, and proving that sustainability can be engineered, not just promised. 

iGem 2025 synthetic biology and the new anatomy of healing

Not all innovation at iGEM 2025 was green. A few meters away from the algae and duckweed, health-focused teams were rewriting what medicine can look like when it starts to think for itself.

The Grenoble Alpes team, ExoSpy, built a platform of engineered vesicles derived from human embryonic kidney (HEK) cells capable of both diagnosing and treating pancreatic cancer. Commonly used in biomedical research, when these cells are loaded with gadolinium, they act as precise MRI contrast agents. Filled with therapeutic cargo, they become targeted drug couriers, and the medicine stops being reactive and starts being responsive.

Meanwhile, Oncoligo approached cancer from another angle, designing synthetic oligonucleotides that silence tumor-promoting mRNA in lung cells.  Besides, the ABCS project by the CJUH-JLU team in China focused on the hidden behavior of adipocytes – fat cells that store energy – to track early signs of breast-cancer relapse, using them as diagnostic storytellers. Even Maryland High School’s project had the same intuition: their at-home test for triple-negative breast cancer democratizes molecular diagnostics, turning lab assays into bathroom-cabinet medicine.

And in Munich, the fusion team TUM-LMU invented InkSkin, transforming diagnosis into something visible and wearable. Their biosensing tattoo ink changes color in response to shifts in biomarkers such as pH, glucose, or inflammatory molecules in the interstitial fluid beneath the skin. The concept turns the body itself into a diagnostic interface, where health data can be read not through machines, but through design.

Across these projects, the same thread runs: biology that listens before it acts. At-home sensors that measure arsenic levels in rice (WIST – Taiwan). Biosensors that respond to hormonal changes (Inara – BYU Rollins Center). Exosomes that translate molecular messages to doctors (Université Grenoble Alpes). Healthtech is no longer about warfare, the ‘search and destroy’ model of 20th-century medicine. It’s about conversation, understanding the body’s chemical dialogue.

At SB8.0, this same ethos surfaced in talks on AI-assisted drug discovery, organ-on-chip predictive toxicology, and bio-fabricated tissues that heal instead of scar.

Bridging the gap between greentech and healthtech

Somewhere between SB8.0’s panels and iGEM 2025’s village sessions, it became obvious: greentech and healthtech no longer move on parallel tracks. They intersect in restoring balance, where biological infrastructure drives planetary and human resilience.

When we engineer algae to capture carbon, we apply the same reasoning as when we engineer cells to absorb cholesterol. When we optimize a photosynthetic cycle, we’re using the same design logic that stabilizes human metabolism. The context changes, carbon fixation or cholesterol uptake, but the code is shared.

This was demonstrated by researchers from Oxford’s Generative Biology Lab, who presented AI models that predicted enzyme behavior and metabolic bottlenecks — whether in cyanobacteria or liver cells.

Furthermore, L’Oréal’s Green Science Incubator showcased plant suspension cell lines that produce actives for skincare with the same precision that pharma uses to manufacture peptides.

Both sides of the synthetic biology sector are building resilience, either for the planet or for the body, and neither can afford to advance alone. The sustainability of human health depends on the sustainability of the environment that supports it.

Yet both face the same invisible adversary: policy that hasn’t caught up with possibility. From restrictions on genetically modified organisms (GMO) to clinical validation bottlenecks, the rules of innovation were written for a slower world. Greentech and healthtech are each finding ways to adapt, designing within constraints, proving safety before scale, turning regulation itself into a design parameter.

Investment, too, should follow that logic. Prioritizing one over the other creates imbalance; progress in greentech enables cleaner supply chains for medicine, while healthtech’s advances in AI, biomaterials, and regulatory trust accelerate greentech’s acceptance.

Synthetic biology has reached the point where industries no longer compete for impact, they co-evolve. The question isn’t which field will lead, but how fast they can grow together.

A living future

As the capabilities of the field stretch out, what will things look like in 2040? Folks at iGEM 2025 and SB8.0 sounded variations of the same dream. 

Fast-forward fifteen years and microbes feed on carbon dioxide and exhale sugar. Plants grow pigments and drugs in the same greenhouse. Tissues regenerate. Organs repair themselves. Hospitals look like bioreactors, and factories like gardens. Synthetic biology will be everywhere, not as a novelty, but as an operating system.

AI will guide design, regulation will evolve, and innovation will slow down just enough to become sustainable. Because progress without trust isn’t progress, and the future of biology will depend as much on ethics and policy as on enzymes and code.

Now, as initiatives like the European Commission’s SYNBEE project, funded as part of the Horizon Europe Programme, aim to boost the entrepreneurial spirit in the synthetic biology space across Europe, by 2040, this could become a reality. Synthetic biology will be powered by collaboration,  between scientists and cells, and between policy and progress.

About the author

Anastasia Deck is an MSc Biotechnology student at Sorbonne Université. Her work bridges plant biotechnology, synthetic biology, and creative science communication. As an R&D apprentice at Neoplants, she develops transformation protocols for non-model plants to unlock new frontiers in green biotech. Passionate about the intersection of biology, design and sustainability, she explores how living systems can reshape industries and aims to make synthetic biology a language for collaboration.