Homework
Weekly homework submissions:
Week 1 HW: Principles and Practices
Step 1. First, describe a biological engineering application or tool you want to develop and why. Something we are interested in is reading and biology, and we wanted to find a way to combine these two interests. We thought about creating bioluminescent bookmarks. These bookmarks would produce light naturally, because of the engineered microorganisms or biological materials that glow in different colors, without the need for batteries, which makes them environmentally friendly.
Week 2 – DNA Read, Write & Edit
Pages Lecture Prep Homework
✨ Week 3 - homework ✨ Here is the link to my Automation Art (2026 HTGAA Bacteriophage): https://opentrons-art.rcdonovan.com/?id=jy86j81azdyuadc After generating this bacteriophage design in Opentrons Art, I created a copy of the Colab notebook and worked there to build a Python protocol that would allow the Opentrons robot to reproduce the artwork on a plate. Since I don’t know Python, I first used ChatGPT to generate the code, but the initial version contained many errors when running in Colab. I then switched to Gemini, which helped me debug and fix the issues. I manually entered the coordinates from the link above, step by step, to reconstruct the design inside the protocol. After completing the process, I obtained the following image.
Week 4 — Protein Design Part I
✨ Part A. Conceptual Questions ✨ 1. How many molecules of amino acids do you take with a piece of 500 grams of meat? (on average an amino acid is ~100 Daltons) Using an online converter ( https://www.unitconverters.net/weight-and-mass/gram-to-dalton.htm ), I calculated that 100 Daltons (1 amino acid) corresponds to approximately 1.66 × 10⁻²² g. After dividing the mass of a 500 g piece of meat by this value, I found the total number of amino acid molecules: