Bi23 Syllabus
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Introduction and Background: biochemistry, molecular biology, and biotechnology
- Engineering across scales – molecules to organisms
- Nucleic acid structure and chemistry.
- Basic molecular biology techniques
Self-replicating molecules and the RNA world
- The prebiotic world and some ideas for the first self replicator
- What the RNA world might have looked like
- The tragedy of the molecular commons - or, the origin of the cell
- The twilight of the RNA empire and the rise of proteins
Evolving molecules in the lab
- Function from random libraries - aptamer selections
- Evolving catalysis - ribozymes
- Evolving catalysis - proteins
Biosensors and detectors
- Diagnostic and forensic PCR, RFLP, microarrays, molecular beacons
- ELISAs and other antibody-based technologies
- Aptamer and ribozyme-based detection
- Interfacing the biomolecular and electronic worlds
Nanomaterials, nanodevices, and biomolecular computation
- DNA as a programmable material
- DNA as a nanomechanical device
- DNA as a computer
Controlling gene expression: natural and engineered systems
- Functional RNA in biology: catalysis, riboswitch, miRNA, RNAi
- siRNA as a research tool and therapeutic
- Programmable gene regulation
Synthetic biology – genetic circuits and control
- Control circuits in biology
- Forward engineering of genetic circuits
- Modeling and standardization of biological parts
Systems biology – biology of complex networks
- Network-scale biology: data, modeling, and theory
- Systems-level properties: information processing, robustness, evolvability
Risk and responsibility in engineering the living world
- Ownership of biological material and knowledge – the intellectual property landscape
- Engineering biology and security issues
- Engineering biology and access to innovation
- Engineering challenges in the future