Cosmos7
Welcome
Welcome to UCSD's COSMOS Cluster 7 - Synthetic Biology.
COSMOS is a month long residential program open to high school students interested in math and science offered at University of California campuses. Students are organized in clusters to participate in hands-on labs, field activities, lectures, and discussions.
Synthetic Biology is offered at UCSD and is put together by:
- Mauricio de Oliveira, Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Department, UCSD
- Carlos Vera, UABC
In 2021 we have the extraordinary help of our Teacher Fellow:
- Mrs. Erin Pedersen, Taft Middle School
and our Cluster Assistants:
- Izabella Barcellos
- Yilong Chen
- Rebecca Ha
- Jacqueline Huang
- Yuanshaun Wu
Synthetic Biology
Synthetic biology is an emerging engineering field that aims to produce novel organisms in scalable and reliable ways to do something useful for humankind; for example, treat diseases, sense toxic compounds, produce new fuels or valuable materials.
After thousands of years of genetic manipulation by selective breeding, genetic engineering has finally developed techniques to read and modify the genetic code. Synthetic biology enriches genetic engineering by applying the basic engineering principles (design, build, test) to modular systems built from simple Lego-like standardized biological parts obtained from an open source catalog (BioBricks). Taking advantage of the increased capabilities to “write” and “read” genetic code, it is now possible to assembly large DNA sequences in minimal amount of time. These coding sequences can be incorporated into plasmid vectors and introduced into the cells to re-program the DNA original instructions. This new genetic code will produce new proteins that may modify the structure and/or function of the cell. In that sense, synthetic biology develops software that builds its own hardware!
One of the newest techniques of synthetic biology, named CRISPR-Cas9, is revolutionizing biomedical sciences by allowing the editing of genetic information in living complex organisms. This tool introduced new ethical dilemmas that will be analyzed in the course.
In this hands-on lab oriented course, we will introduce the basic concepts and techniques of synthetic biology, apply engineering principles to design, build and test modified organisms, and develop mathematical models that quantitatively describe their behavior. The students will learn basic recombinant engineering techniques to clone specific DNA sequences in plasmid vectors, how to transform E. Coli bacteria and S. Cerevisiae yeast with plasmid vectors to produce fluorescent and bioluminescent proteins, purify recombinant proteins, produce proteins in cell-free systems, test a basic CRISPR-Cas9 system, and predict the behavior of modified organisms using predictive mathematical models.
Techniques learned in this course will allow the students to propose new projects that require minimal lab equipment and that may be developed in their own home schools.