A group of students from the University of Texas at Austin are participating in an international biology competition known as iGEM. This requires them to come up with a creative solution to a problem that would benefit society.
The UT Austin iGEM 2022 team has embarked on a mission to protect the Texas Hill Country’s beloved bat population.
In 2020, the first signs of an infection were detected in the Texas Hill Country, threatening the bats that live under our iconic Austin Bat Bridge on Congress Avenue.
Keaton Brown is a senior at UT, majoring in biochemistry.
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“We are using an organism called ADP1 to detect the environmental DNA left behind by White Nose Syndrome,” he said.
In the last 15 years, White Nose Syndrome has threatened North American bats, killing over 6 million bats and wiping out entire regional populations.
