Genome Editing Biotechnology

03-728  ·  fall 2022

overall:     difficulty: very chill     prof: Stephanie Wong-Noonan

Highly recommend this class! It was a mini in the second half of the fall semester, corresponding with 03-738 Synthetic Biology, which I took in the first half. We covered the methods used in genome editing (most importantly CRISPR/Cas-9), how the technology was developed, its applications, and its ethical issues/controversies. The class format was lecture interspersed with small-group discussion. The professor very much encouraged active participation and generating new ideas. The homework was mostly reading important papers in the field and answering questions. Most students in the course were grad students from a variety of programs, and we had some great conversations. I loved this course and its professor (Stephanie Wong-Noonan).

 

Synthetic Biology

03-738  ·  fall 2022

overall:     difficulty: very chill     prof: Huaiying Zhang

This is a cool class! It was a mini I took in the fall semester. We read one academic paper for each class meeting. I didn’t know very much about synthetic biology before taking this course, and I thought it was absolutely fascinating. Most of the class meetings were student-led presentations on the assigned paper (I led one) with some class participation. The professor raised interesting questions about the challenges, possible applications, and ethical issues of the field.

Synthetic biology is mainly about programming cells to do what you want. Examples include using yeast cells to produce insulin at scale, training T cells to hunt down cancer, and turning bacteria into biosensors for environmental toxins. Food-related applications include lab-grown meat, vanilla flavoring synthesized from plastic, and more resilient crops. A “genetic circuit” turns an input (e.g. the presence of a certain molecule) into an output (e.g. the production of a protein). Researchers have been able to engineer several basic logic gates (AND, OR, NOT, NAND) by turning genes on and off. Our electronic devices use these same logical operations to perform all kinds of computations. The challenge in biological systems is to create the desired circuit without overtaxing the cell’s resources, which can cause cell death. Pretty fascinating stuff!