BU06:Executive Summary
From 2006.igem.org
| Line 11: | Line 11: | ||
Motivation factors for BU professors: | Motivation factors for BU professors: | ||
* put boston university undergraduates at the center of an infrastructure of a 'revolutionary' (sorry) new field | * put boston university undergraduates at the center of an infrastructure of a 'revolutionary' (sorry) new field | ||
| - | * opportunity to build a year-on-year franchise | + | * opportunity to build a year-on-year franchise (a resource for getting kids molecular biology experience -- keep in mind there's not that many _mol bio_ labs in the dept) |
* let our undergrads socialize scientifically outside the university | * let our undergrads socialize scientifically outside the university | ||
* complement/enhance senior project (one of our key differentiators--sorry to lapse into admin-speak) | * complement/enhance senior project (one of our key differentiators--sorry to lapse into admin-speak) | ||
| Line 19: | Line 19: | ||
* quantitative quantitative quantitative (BU BME professors' three favorite words) | * quantitative quantitative quantitative (BU BME professors' three favorite words) | ||
| + | * growth in # of teams (5, one of which was BU) -> 12 -> 43 -> at least seven hundred next year | ||
| + | * obvious opportunity for press coverage | ||
| - | + | * biofactories | |
| + | * engineering control of stem cells (this matters to ppl doing tissue engineering) | ||
| + | * the Biological Century | ||
Revision as of 22:57, 8 June 2006
PUNCHY!
- SB is a new field - Why is it interesting, no, essential!?
- Standardization of genetic engineering to enable innovation
- Improves collaboration, rate of innovation,
- iGEM is about undergrads
Motivation factors for BU professors:
- put boston university undergraduates at the center of an infrastructure of a 'revolutionary' (sorry) new field
- opportunity to build a year-on-year franchise (a resource for getting kids molecular biology experience -- keep in mind there's not that many _mol bio_ labs in the dept)
- let our undergrads socialize scientifically outside the university
- complement/enhance senior project (one of our key differentiators--sorry to lapse into admin-speak)
- bringing an engineering sensibility to biology is a huge deal for a biomedical engineering department centrally located in a city with a huge biomedical industrial complex
- Jay Keasling/Amyris greatly reduced the cose of producing artemesin for huge # of people in need -- as the good Dr. Endy says we should make this routine so that it doesn't require $20m of Bill Gates' money and 100 (?) man-years of effort.
- quantitative quantitative quantitative (BU BME professors' three favorite words)
- growth in # of teams (5, one of which was BU) -> 12 -> 43 -> at least seven hundred next year
- obvious opportunity for press coverage
- biofactories
- engineering control of stem cells (this matters to ppl doing tissue engineering)
- the Biological Century
We need one million dollars!
We are a group of Undergraduate students from BU who participated in a molecular biology course during the Spring 2006 semester. Our professor, Timothy Gardner, and Professor Drew Endy (MIT) introduced us to the world of synthetic biology. Synthetic Biology is a new field of research that integrates science and engineering in order design biological systems that carry out specific functions, such as programming bacteria to work as a biological toggle switch. Fascinated by the opportunities given by this novel we field of research we decided to participate in the iGEM 2006 competition.
Because of the complexity involved in designing and building biological systems we decided to attempt to implement three ideas, each more complicated than the previous one. Moreover, the more complicated ideas are built off of the simpler ideas
