What is a chassis? You probably have connotations of cars, machinery, and/or vehicles with that word. What does it have to do with iGEM?
In iGEM, and synthetic biology in general, the microorganism that is being worked with is referred to as the cellular chassis (shăs'ē, chăs'ē). For most iGEM teams, the chassis will be E. coli, but you are not limited to working with E. coli in iGEM. Some of the past chassis have been Bacillus subtilis, lactobacillus, yeast, and even some mammalian cells.
So, why does it matter that different chassis are used, anyway? Well, beyond their different growth requirements and quirks about competency (the ability of an organism to take up DNA), different chassis have different innate abilities. These innate abilities may make the chassis more worthwhile to work with than another microbe, e.g., E. coli. Because while E. coli is the best researched microbe, it may simply not have a trait you need for your project.
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