Engineering Biology II: Developing synthetic biology technologies across scales

1 Unit · Graduate

At its core, synthetic biology is inspired by the power and diversity of the living world. It is an endeavor predicated on the idea that we can learn to more reliably and rapidly engineer biological functions for impactful applications in medicine, materials, agriculture, sustainability, and more. What is unique to synthetic biology is the application of an engineering-driven approach to accelerate the design-build-test-learn loops required for reprogramming existing, and constructing new, biological systems. This is made more effective and powerful when combined with the scales approach to understanding synthetic biology technologies. In this course we will increase our understanding of the scales conceptual framework by exploring the physical, chemical and biological concepts and principles that arise at each biological scales, and the computational and experimental tools needed to engineer at that scale. We will emphasize societal scale concepts that drive engineering choices made at each scale. At the end of this course, students will be able to apply a holistic approach to engineering impactful synthetic biology technologies.