Homework

Weekly homework submissions:

  • Week 1 HW: Principles and Practices

    1. First, describe a biological engineering application or tool you want to develop and why. I’m passionate about both food and biotechnology and seek to combine the two discipline together for my future career. A biological engineering application that I would love to work on is precision fermentation production for alternative sustainable protein sources, specifically β-Lactoglobulin (BLG) protein for recombinant milk production. I was inspired by a PhD student’s publication at Wageningen University & Research while I was searching for a university to earn my Master’s degree. Indonesia’s demand for milk and dairy products has been increasing over the years, and our climate isn’t suited for dairy cattle farming compared to other countries with a more appropriate climate and productive dairy cows. Not to mention the environmental impact of dairy farming, along with the scarcity of arable land, are also factors to be considered to supplement part of the industry with precision fermentation (Hoppenreijs, 2024).

  • Week 1 HW: Week 2 Lecture Prep

    Questions from Professor Jacobson: Nature’s machinery for copying DNA is called polymerase. What is the error rate of polymerase? How does this compare to the length of the human genome? How does biology deal with that discrepancy? How many different ways are there to code (DNA nucleotide code) for an average human protein? In practice what are some of the reasons that all of these different codes don’t work to code for the protein of interest? Answer:

  • Week 2 HW: DNA Read, Write, & Edit

    Part 1: Benchling & In-silico Gel Art For this week’s Part 1 homework, students are tasked with doing several tasks. First, create a Benchling account. Second, simulate restriction enzyme digestion of a predetermined sequence using several enzymes. Third, once students are able to simulate the restriction enzyme digestion, they can create a simple art form named the Latent Figure Protocol. For the first part of the task, I would need to create an account for Benchling. It was a relatively simple process of using my Gmail account to sign up for Benchling. A few minutes later, after entering my details, I am now the proud owner of a Benchling account.