Homework

Week 1 HW: Principles and Practices
Application/ Tool I propose developing a Genetically Engieered Microorganism (GEM) that does Environmental Cleaning. I am interest in GEM to degrade environmental pollutants such as oil spills, pesticids or heavy metals in soil & water. But among those most alarming problem which needs our attention is plastic waste. Research shows that GEMs that express Polyethylene terephthalate hydrolase (PETase) and Mono(2-hydroxyethyl) terephthalate hydrolase (MHETase) enzymes can degrade i.e. plastic waste in controlled environment (Barclay A, Acharya KR, 2023). PETase first degrades polythylene terephthalate (PET) into Mono(2-hydroxyethyl) terephthalate (MHET) and then MHETase hydolyzes it into terepthalic acid and ethylene glycol monomers. Naturally PETase and MHETase are inefficient, while bioengineering can improve its activity, stability, and temperature tolerance.
Week 2 HW: DNA Read, Write & Edit
Lecture Prep Professor Jacobson DNA polymerase has a raw error rate of ~1:104 nucleotides, which improves to ~1:107 with proofreading. The human genome is ~3*109 base pairs, so many errors would occur per replication without correction. Biology resolves this through mismatch repair and other DNA repair pathways, reducing the final error rate.