My Journey Through Synthetic Biology

Hello again! Sorry for the wait but this topic is so huge for synthetic biology that it took me a little longer to compress it down into a blog. Winning the 2020 Nobel Prize in chemistry, CRISPR is one of the most crucial innovations to genome editing and will only continue to improve.  Today I’ll be covering CRISPR: what it is, how it works, and how it’s already shaping our world today.  What is CRISPR and How it Works You’ve probably already heard of CRISPR at some point in your life, but did you know it actually comes straight from nature? Originally, CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) was discovered as part of a natural defense system that bacteria used to fight off viruses. When a bacteria survives a viral attack, they keep a tiny piece of the virus’s DNA as a memory. Because of this, if the same virus was to attack again, the bacteria can recognize and destroy it faster. My mom calls it a “natural immunity” and I saw it during COVID-19 whe...

  Hey everyone! As I was doing my research for this week’s blog, I came across a fascinating concept in synthetic biology that I thought I would bring up. Imagine being able to program living cells to detect toxins, diseases, or changes in the environment and release signals whenever something’s off.  In today’s blog, I’ll walk you through what biosensors are, how they work, and why they’re one of the most exciting applications of SynBio today.  What Is a Biosensor? A biosensor device uses a biological system to detect something specific. After spotting a chemical or toxin, a biosensor will convert its findings into a signal we can read.  A Standard Biosensor has Five Main Components:     Analyte - the thing you’re trying to detect Bioreceptor - a molecule that specifically binds to an analyte.  Transducer - a tool that takes the biological reaction and turns it into a measurable signal Electronics - a tool that processes the signal and mak...

In my last blog, I talked about how synthetic biology is different from genetic engineering. From my discussion, one of the biggest differences between the two was SynBio’s use of standardized biological parts. These parts are known as Biobricks and are one of the largest factors towards Synbio’s uniqueness.  In today’s blog, I’ll explain what Biobricks actually are, how they work, why standardization matters so much in synthetic biology, and the real-world applications that they are being applied to.  Biobricks: The LEGO of Synthetic Biology Biobricks are short sequences of DNA that each have their own specific role in gene expression. To name a few, a promoter is a Biobrick that tells the cell when to start reading DNA. A coding region is the actual set of instructions that tells the cell which protein to make. Finally a terminator signals for the cell to stop reading DNA. By combining these parts, scientists can control exactly when, where, and how much of a protein is m...