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A team of students from Theodore Roosevelt High School is preparing for the International Genetically Engineered Machine competition, known as iGEM.
The students will be the first group to represent San Antonio at this year’s iGEM competition, scheduled for Nov. 13–16, 2026, in Paris, France.
Mark Graebener is a junior at Theodore Roosevelt High School and plans to study chemical engineering. He leads the team working on a project aimed at detecting and preventing fish spoilage.
“San Antonio and other cities in Texas eat a lot of seafood, right?” said Graebener. “Naturally, there are going to be people who eat spoiled seafood and get ill due to the compounds found in decaying fish.”
The students’ design would help detect the build-up of those compounds to determine whether seafood is spoiled. Graebener said the group’s findings could serve as a more affordable alternative to existing methods of detecting spoiled seafood.
“Really, there isn’t anything like it currently available on the market,” said Graebener. “But existing options are expensive, which would be unrealistic for countries that rely on fish exports.”
Regions such as South Korea, the Philippines, and Indonesia are major fish exporters that often can’t afford the expensive equipment currently used to detect spoilage compounds in seafood.
The students are looking for sponsors to help fund materials and travel costs for the project. The team is in the early stages of research and development. Graebener outlined the process:
“We would go through a receptor that senses chemical compounds like ammonium and TMOs (transition metal oxides),” said Graebener. “It would create a signal which would close off that circuit. It would create a color change. You know, how a pH strip works. Kind of like that.”
The students must meet competition criteria that include developing a DNA circuit, building a website that details their work, and creating a wiki, or database, that demonstrates the project’s contribution to biology.
iGEM is the largest synthetic biology competition in the world. The collaborative event is open to college and high school students, entrepreneurs, and community laboratories.
iGEM was founded at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2003 and has since grown into an international competition, with its annual event now held in Paris.
