Homework

Weekly homework submissions:

• Week 1 HW: Principles and Practices

  Tattoos are a popular form of body art, but a limitation is that they are permanent. I propose engineered microbial bio-tattoos. Human skin is populated with trillions of microbes. Engineering skin dwelling microbes to express skin-safe pigments and endow two dimensional multicellular organizations would allow for long-term body art that could be edited, moved, resized, or outright removed with a targeted topical anti-microbial agent. Living tattoos would be a considerable advancement of an ancient form of self-expression. Infection and toxicity risk Engineered microbes are a pathogenic risk. In standard tattooing, pigment is injected into the dermis and compartmentalized primarily by macrophages. If engineered microbes and the associated pigments need to be internalized by human cells, this presents risk of infection or toxicity.

• Week 2 HW: DNA Read Write and Edit

  In silico digests Digestion with restriction enzymes yields DNA fragments of varied size. Running gel electrophoresis with a selection of enzymes can produce artwork. DNA design challenge 3.1) I have selected YugO, a bacterial potassium channel involved in metabolically mediated electrical signaling in B. subtilis. I am interested in this protein as it relates to my work exploring engineered electrical signaling behaviors in bacteria. Per UniProt, the sequence for this protein is : MKSNRIFISWLRWPLFIRIGVIILCLILLFGQIIYILEPKQFTSVFEGIWWAVVTVSTVGYGDYVPHTPLGQAAGILLILSGASFVTAYFATLSAAAFSRQHRYIEGKVAYKGRDHIILIGWNEKTNRLLKDLQLAAPSKTVVLIDESLTEGPLIENVHFIRGHAADDGTLKRANITEAESVMITADQYKSETDADMLSVLTLLSVKGLNPLAYCIVEILTDRFVTNAERAGANQIIGTSEFISRAMLQHYQVKLRPSKQQNGIKLTLDQHVELLAVPDELKGAAYKTCVLYFLDHNTTIIGIQKKEGPMLSPPLTYKVLETDQFLAI