Homework

Week 1 HW: Principles and Practices
Class Assignment — DUE BY START OF FEB 10 LECTURE 1. First, describe a biological engineering application or tool you want to develop and why. This could be inspired by an idea for your HTGAA class project and/or something you are already doing in your research, or something you are just curious about. Proposed Application: I would like to develop synthetic engineering technology that allows for the diagnosis of dengue cases (DENV-1, DENV-2, DENV-3, DENV-4) in sand flies or mosquitoes (Aedes aegypti) directly in the environments where these vectors live. This is because dengue is a pandemic, epidemic disease in tropical and subtropical regions of the world. One of these regions is the Ecuadorian Amazon, where, despite efforts to promote development, public health remains a major challenge. This is especially true for dengue, for which there is no widely effective vaccine, and treatment is mainly based on hydration. Determining the specific dengue serotype would allow us to carry out epidemiological analyses and prevent increases in the number of cases.