Homework
Weekly homework submissions:
Week 1: Principles and Practices
Class Assignment Project Idea Chronic wounds and surgical site infections affect millions of patients and cost heathcare systems tens of billions of dollars annually, yet closure devices often remain as passive stitches that do not actively orchestrate local immunity or regeneration [1][2]. Drug-eluting sutures have shown that suture material can safely deliver local therapeutics, but current designs provide only finite, non-adaptive release of single agents such as antibiotics or growth factors [3][4]. Cell-filled sutures packed with mesenchymal stem cells already demonstrate that viable cells can be integrated into suture structures and enhance healing, but these cells are unmodified and lack controllable, multi-functional outputs [5]. Separately, engineered combinatorial cell devices in fiber-like formats can secrete optimized cocktails of growth factors to accelerate wound and bone repair, but they are not load-bearing sutures and do not address infection or scar modulation at the incision line [6].
Week 2: DNA Read, Write, and Edit
Benchling and In-Silico Gel Art Simulate Restriction Enzyme Digest I found this process quite intuitive, as I’ve done similar simulations with the application SnapGene, but it was interesting to notice the small interface differences between the two!
Python script for Opentrons artwork … Lab automation questions … Final project ideas
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