Homework
Weekly homework submissions:
Week 1 HW: Principles and Practices
Principles and Practices Assignment 1 First, describe a biological engineering application or tool you want to develop and why. For this assignment, I want to explore the world of textile 3D printing with biomaterials. The fashion industry is one of the biggest polluters, with textile production generating massive amounts of waste, microplastic pollution, and toxic chemical runoff. A 3D-printable biomaterial textile could reduce waste, eliminate harmful processes, and allow for sustainable, on-demand production. I want to explore a way to produce garments and materials in a sustainable manner using synthetic biology principles. The materials and garments would be “grown”, and would be biodegradable, non-toxic, and could be engineered for properties like flexibility, durability, and even water resistance.
Homework 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? A: Polymerase error rate appprox. 1 in 10^6 base pairs, vs. human genome approx. 3.2 billion base pairs. This leads to thousands of errors per replication. Biology deals with that discrepancy by proofreading polyerases, and through post-replication mismatch repair systems and evolutionary selection.