Brian's blog: https://tanet.mit.edu/
- choose a problem
- explore the problem
- state of the art
- who are stakeholders
- requirements for a "good" solution
- safety and regulatory concerns
have a completely authentic research experience, do the best science we can - choose an approach
- Designing DNA/experiments
- Order DNA -> construction
Make data
First half of semester:
Small groups focused around specific potential projects
Developing a problem
Interacting with the primary literature (3 hours with a medical dictionary)
reporting- journal clubs by the summer
stakeholders (don't forget to talk about funding!)
Skills
TC
- Cloning (PCR)
- Genious
- Data analysis (Modelling) not just trial and error, get computers involved! Model protein structure and dynamics, biomaterials and metabolic engineering. iGEM judges like this.
Ideas
- Kyle: Mammalian metabolic engineering
- glycosilation: many proteins are amino acids decorated with sugars by the golgi body. It's how immune system tells self from not-self. Produce anti bodies with mammalian cells so the immune system doesn't destroy them
- heparin?
- synthetic meat- to please our steak-holders. VEGAN MEAT!
- tissues by design
- Jesse:
- fighting resistant strains. let's make crispa that targets bad plasmids (done and published)
- By phages: already done b4y the Lu lab.
- Prevent horizontal gene transfer (by conjugation or other methods)
- Margarie:
- bacterial beauty products
- microbiome: gut, skin?
- damage repair
- secretory: replace proteins
- bacteria tattoo
- brain measurements, optogenetics. delivery issues?
- deep tissue imaging is hard
- live animals
- high spacial/temporal resolution needed
- grow george church's brain in a dish and get a sensor to detect neural circuitry
- Autoimmune diseases
- immunology is a deep and complex field, we don't know much about it?
- cell-cell communications
- specificity
- use integrins to mediate whether immune cells get to inflammatory sites
- design antibodies
- dynamics of response. think about the way things operate in time
- cell movement- things crossing epithelial barriers
- Randomise collagen structure
- as people age more collagen builds up, and when people are wounded collagen displaces natural cells creating scar tissue and increasing in size.
- collagen forms neat rows and is hard to break down. inducing a more random structure could help dissolve scar tissue and lessen stiffness
- collagenases
- A cream that makes scars disappear?
- liver fibrosis
- Biofilms
- can lead to resistance and diseases
- give biofilms cancer!
- what makes a prokaryote "multicellular"?
- use slime molds to clean surfaces
- Sickle cell anemia
- classic monogenic disease -> genome editing
- hematopoetic
- RED BLOOD CELLS DON'T HAVE GENOMES! engineered RBCs
- Biological sunflower
- ask how vibrio does it? vibrio fischeri
- luciferase
- couple energy input to luciferin production and light sensing module coupled to luciferase
- marchantia = synthetic biology for plants platform
- Yeast Soylent: macronutrient composition of soylent is a bit of fat from soybeans and some long chain sugars, protein is rice powder. Could we engineer a yeast strain that made macronutrients at a biologically compelte level?
- engineer yeast to enrich bread
- research cost of inputs
- Good Manufacturing Practices
- first do proof of concept, then try moving it to a larger scale in a GMP lab. make a yeast strain that produces proteins, carbs and fat at levels that, supplimented with appropriate micronutrients, you could live on for the rest of your life
- People modified yeast to make bioengineered beer (banana, wintergreen flavoured...) -> you can modify yeast to produce flavour components!
- Biofilm 3D printing.
- last year: 3D printing with light
- program cells to make interesting structures using cell-cell communication. use light sensor with multiple colours
- mammalian cells: to calcify things (directed tissue formation)
- interesting model organism: modify silica shell walls of a diatom. control over silica wall deposition
- produce mother of pearl