Homework
Weekly homework submissions:
Week 1 HW: Principles and Practices + Pre-Lecture 2 Questions
First, describe a biological engineering application or tool you want to develop and why. This could be inspired by an idea for your HTGAA class project and/or something for which you are already doing in your research, or something you are just curious about. Answer: I am curious how native tissue in the body regulate oxidation, since the lipids within native tissue tend to be much less oxidized than that of foods. So I want to harness the mechanism that the body uses to eliminate reactive oxagen species (ROS) and develop bio-antioxidants. The reason behind developing this tool is to unlock a more robust method of flavor preservation using metabolic pathways found in nature rather than relying on chemicals/ingredients for the mechanism of action. This solution could also be more compatible with our bodies, and, designing microbe based food technology to have specific functions within both food systems and in our bodies, it could be a step towards direclty engineering our gut microbiom as we would want (grander goal).
Week 2 HW: DNA Read Write and Edit
Question 1 Question 3 I chose fruit fly because of their ommitidia. 3.4) I would first amplify with PCR, and then purify with gel extraction. Make sure I have a sizeable concentration of DNA, and then I would try to use a cell free system to produce my protein. I would need to choose the right buffer that has the RNAases and ribosomes/tRNAs I need for transcription and translation, respectively.
Question 1 Inspiration: I am reading project hail mary with my friends as a weekly book club before the movie is released in late March. A character in the book is Rocky, and that is who is represented in the bio-art. Code: https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1RF8Lu9l6_CmfEs6N-k-AFWMyPn6nrlXo#scrollTo=pczDLwsq64mk&line=1&uniqifier=1 AI Assistance: Google Gemini 2.5 Flash built into Google Collab Prompts: I want to make a design that resembles a rock with six legs like a spider, this is the starter code you have to build this image, the starter code is in the “your code” up to the ### YOUR CODE HERE to create your design line