My Journey Through Synthetic Biology

Hey everyone! Welcome back to this week’s blog. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been diving into how cells control their identity. I’ve talked about gene regulation, epigenetics, and even how scientists can reprogram cells or convert them into completely different types. But as I was thinking, all of the topics I’ve talked about the last 4 weeks lead to one bigger question: Before we even try to change a cell’s identity . . . how does it get that identity in the first place? How does a single cell know whether to become a neuron, a muscle cell, or part of your skin? That’s what today’s topic is about, and the process is known as cell fate determination. What Is Cell Fate? Cell fate refers to the final identity a cell adopts. Early in development, cells are much more flexible. They have the potential to become many different types of cells. But as development continues, cells gradually become more specialized. At some point, a cell commits. From that point on, it will follow a specific pa...

Hey everyone, and welcome back to the blog! I hope you guys have all had a good weekend and can sit back, relax, and enjoy today’s topic as you wrap up. Last week I talked about transdifferentiation. In case you didn’t read, transdifferentiation is the idea that one mature cell type can sometimes be converted directly into another. That concept alone already challenges the traditional view that cells are permanently locked into their identities. But scientists eventually discovered something even more surprising. Instead of converting one cell type directly into another, it’s sometimes possible to reset a mature cell back into a stem-like state.  This process is called cellular reprogramming. What Is Cellular Reprogramming? Cellular reprogramming is the process of taking a fully developed cell and reverting it to a pluripotent state, meaning it can develop into many different cell type s. These cells are thus known as induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells. The key idea is th...

Hey everyone, and welcome to blog number 40! It’s been almost a year since I posted my first blog, and it's crazy to see how far I’ve come. For this week’s blog, I thought about the last two weeks of topics. And after writing about gene regulation and epigenetics, I started thinking about a question that sounds almost impossible at first. If cells can specialize into different types during development, do they remain stuck in that specialization forever?  And, for a long time, scientists thought the answer was yes. Once a cell became a muscle cell, neuron, or skin cell, that identity was considered permanent. But modern biology has revealed something much more interesting. In some cases, cells can change their identity, a process called transdifferentiation. What Is Transdifferentiation? Transdifferentiation occurs when one mature cell type directly converts into another mature cell type. Importantly, the cell does not first return to a stem-cell state. Instead, it switches identit...

Hey everyone! Welcome back to the blog series. After last week’s blog on gene regulation, I kept thinking about other fundamental science topics I should talk about. And after looking through Google for about 2 hours today, I decided to write and dive deeper into a perspective of the Synthetic Biology world that is frequently mentioned in my AP Bio class: Epigenetics.  So far in this series, we’ve learned that genes can be turned on or off. But, what actually controls whether parts of DNA are even accessible in the first place? This question is an important one to ask because of one important aspect of Biology: just because a gene exists doesn’t mean a cell can easily use it.  What Is Epigenetics? Epigenetics refers to changes in gene expression that don’t involve altering the DNA sequence itself. The DNA code stays the same, but how that code is read can change. If gene regulation is about deciding which genes to activate, epigenetics is about controlling how accessible those...

Hey everyone! Welcome back to my blog. Over the last few weeks, I’ve spent a lot of time focusing on complex applications of Synthetic Biology. So, today I wanted to take a step back, zoom out, and focus on something fundamental.  The question I’m focusing on today is pretty simple: How does a cell decide what genes to turn on? Every tissue, every organ, and every biological response ultimately comes down to which genes are active and which ones aren’t. That’s where gene regulation and transcriptional control come in. If DNA Is the Same, Why Are Cells Different? Did you know that almost every cell in your body contains the exact same DNA? Your neurons, muscle cells, skin cells, and immune cells all carry the same genetic code. So why don’t they all look and behave the same? The answer isn’t in the DNA sequence itself. It’s in which parts of the DNA are being read. Gene regulation is the process that determines which genes are turned “on” or “off” in a cell at a given time. Transcri...