HKUST(GZ) team wins iGEM gold again with lychee project
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou) Lychee Guardians team was awarded a Gold Medal at the 2025 International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition on Oct 31 Paris time for their synthetic biology project focused on lychee preservation.
This achievement marks the second consecutive gold for HKUST(GZ), following the 2024 win by the University's Coral Cola team in the same prestigious event.
Over seven months of dedicated teamwork, these students not only earned a gold medal but also made significant progress in scientific research and teamwork through self-guided exploration, transforming from classroom students into capable young researchers.
The team was composed of 22 first-year and one second-year undergraduate students, most with little or no formal biology background. After forming in November 2024, they unanimously chose to start a new project from scratch. Over the course of a month and a half of brainstorming and voting, they decided on a lychee preservation project suggested by team member Shanzheng LIU. Under the guidance of advisors Qiaojin LIN and Junyu XU, who followed a strict “assessing feasibility without providing solutions” approach, the team split into five subgroups: wet lab, dry lab, human practices, wiki, and media.
In the initial research phase, the team devoted significant time to a literature review, eventually identifying melatonin and natural wax as promising preservation approaches after discarding other candidates, such as chitosan. The wet lab team, under the guidance of instructor Qi ZHANG, overcame repeated experimental failures and validated transgenic products through Sudan staining just before the submission deadline.
The dry lab team shifted from their initial plan of creating a genomic prediction model after consulting with professors Cuiping PAN and Yanlin ZHANG. These experts helped them understand the key differences between eukaryotic and prokaryotic genomic structures. Instead, they developed "SynbioMCP", an all-in-one platform designed for newcomers to synthetic biology, which integrates large language models with biological databases and tools. In addition, they built a specialized lychee database featuring over 2,000 traceable records from five varieties, each including color images, near-infrared images, variety identification, and post-harvest storage days.
The Human Practices team, carried out field research with university support, while the Wiki and Media teams worked through the National Day holiday to finalize the website, with some members contributing remotely due to travel restrictions to Paris.
At the competition, the team impressed judges with their English presentations and thorough Q&A sessions, with team leader Jing'en GUO preparing a comprehensive document addressing potential questions.
