Homework

Weekly homework submissions:

  • Week 1 HW: Principles and Practices

    Assignment (Class - Ethics) 1. Describe a biological engineering application or tool you want to develop and why.

  • Week 2 HW: Read, Write, and Edit DNA

    Part 1: Benchling & In-silico Gel Art Part 2: Gel Art - Restriction Digests and Gel Electrophoresis See Week 2 Lab. Part 3: DNA Design Challenge 3.1. Choose your protein.

  • Week 3 HW: Lab Automation

    Post-Lab Questions 1. Find and describe a published paper that utilizes the Opentrons or an automation tool to achieve novel biological applications. Dettinger et al. (2022), “Open-source personal pipetting robots with live-cell incubation and microscopy compatibility,” published in Nature Communications. The authors introduce PHIL (Pipetting Helper Imaging Lid), an open-source, low-cost pipetting robot designed for liquid handling during live-cell experiments and microscopy workflows. PHIL is important because it addresses a real problem in academic labs: many experiments are small-scale, frequently changing, and not well suited to large industrial automation systems, which are often expensive and hard to adapt.

  • Week 4 HW: Protein Design Part 1

    Part A. Conceptual Questions 1. How many molecules of amino acids do you take with a piece of 500 grams of meat? (on average an amino acid is ~100 Daltons)

  1. Why do humans eat beef but do not become a cow, eat fish but do not become fish?
  2. Why are there only 20 natural amino acids?