Homework

Weekly homework submissions:

• Week 1 HW: Principles and Practices

  Question #1 During my undergraduate thesis project I developed a whole-cell bacterial biosensor for the high-sensitivity quantification of glyphosate, the most widely used herbicide globally. The project consists of an engineered strain of Agrobacterium tumefaciens as a biological chassis. The tool works by leveraging the natural phn operon (for degradation of phosphonates), regulated by the PhnF repressor and a promoter sensitive to it, which I have repurposed into a genetic circuit where the presence of glyphosate triggers the expression of a Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP). I am curious about this because glyphosate is essential for modern agriculture and its environmental accumulation and potential health risks are a growing concern. Current detection methods like HPLC-MS are expensive, centralized, and require complex sample preparation. My goal is to create a tool that allows for decentralized, low-cost environmental monitoring, enabling farmers and regulatory agencies to quantify herbicide levels directly in the field with high specificity and sensitivity.

• week-02-hw-dna-read-write-and-edit

  Part 1 For this part of the assignment I started playing with Ronan´s website by making random patterns with the enzymes given. Som of the electrophoresis digestion patterns of the DNA started to look like letters and I decided to make my own word. Then, i tried to design that same pattern in benchling digestion tool, but i think it look better in Ronan´s website, because there are sapces between the gel lanes.

• week-03-hw-lab-automation/_index.md

  Python script for opentrons artwork Post lab questions Transforming microfluidics for single-cell analysis with robotics and artificial intelligenceDOI In this Review, the authors highlight the importance of single cell resolution analysis aided by robotic automated microfluidics. The traditional method of bulk analysis averages signals across entire cell populations, maskin critical biological diversity at single cell levels. In a population of cells, there are different cell populations, due to genetic, epigenetic and environmental variations. In cancer and immunology research this is fundamental because even a small fraction of drug-resistant cells can drive disease progression and treatment failure. The process of screening diverse methods of treatment or looking for molecular markers could make a decisive impact on how we treat this diseases.