Homework
Weekly homework submissions:
Week 1 HW: Principles and Practices
Question 1: I propose a digital, governance-aware health data platform designed to support a population-level understanding of cancer and tumor prevalence in Iraq. At present, most medical records in Iraq are paper-based and fragmented across hospitals or retained by patients, making them vulnerable to loss and preventing the creation of a reliable national picture of cancer types, trends, and possible contributing factors. As a result, medical research, evidence-based policymaking, and long-term public health planning are severely limited. This proposed tool would not collect full patient records, enable diagnosis, or identify individuals. Instead, it would focus on aggregated, de-identified clinical and contextual data that can be used to understand broader cancer patterns while respecting patient privacy, consent, and cultural sensitivities. The primary goal of this platform is to address a critical infrastructure gap in Iraq’s health system by enabling ethical research and informed decision-making, while explicitly avoiding surveillance, stigmatization, or misuse of sensitive medical information. While neurological and psychological conditions represent equally serious challenges in Iraq, they are intentionally excluded from the initial scope of this design due to heightened ethical, privacy, and stigma-related risks.
Week 2 HW: DNA read, write, and edit
Homework Questions from Professor Jacobson: According to the Lecture 2 slides, the intrinsic error rate of biological DNA polymerase is approximately 1 error per 10⁶ base pairs. The slides also indicate that the human genome is approximately 3.2 × 10⁹ base pairs in length. At this error rate, replication of the human genome would result in thousands of errors per replication cycle if no additional correction mechanisms existed. The slides explain that biology addresses this discrepancy through error-correcting mechanisms, including proofreading activity associated with DNA polymerase and post-replication mismatch repair systems, such as the MutS pathway. Together, these mechanisms reduce the effective mutation rate and allow large genomes to be stably maintained.
Post-Lab Questions Find and describe a published paper that utilizes the Opentrons or an automation tool to achieve novel biological applications. Article: “Automation of protein crystallization scaleup via Opentrons-2 liquid handling” Jacob B. DeRoo, Alec A. Jones, Caroline K. Slaughter, Tim W. Ahr, Sam M. Stroup, Grace B. Thompson, Christopher D. Snow, SLAS Technology, Volume 32, 2025, 100268, ISSN 2472-6303,
Week 1 HW: Principles and Practices
HW4