To empower young scientists to shape synthetic biology, the Hopkins iGEM team developed a course, EN.580.150 Synthetic Biology Design. This course was designed to introduce freshmen to concepts in synthetic biology over a 3 week period during winter between semesters. The course was open to all undergraduate students at Johns Hopkins University and had ten enrollees who had little or no familiarity with synthetic biology. From the success of this course we hosted in January, a few of the students joined the 2023 Hopkins iGEM team.
Synthetic biology is the practice of re-engineering organisms to perform a useful task. In this course, students will be exposed to the relatively novel field of synthetic biology through lectures and activities on
Students will present a project at the end of this course synthesizing everything they have learned.
By the end of this course students should be able to:
Student members of the iGEM team were instructors. They developed all lecture materials and in class activities and delivered the lessons for each of the different modules.
The course met thirteen times with class duration of 1 hour and 40 minutes. The classes were held hybrid with students joining in-person in a classroom or lab or synchronously online on Zoom.
Through lectures, students learned about DNA assembly. Through lab activities, in groups they chose their own chromoprotein and then followed protocols to assemble it into a plasmid and transform the plasmid into E. coli.
Through lectures, students learned about computer aided design and basics of electronics. Through lab activities, they made designs to be 3D printed and then assembled the electrical components of a photometer to measure the fluorescence and optical density of the bacterial cultures they engineered to express a chromoprotein.
Through lectures, students learned the history of synthetic biology, guiding principles of the field, ethical concerns, and risk reduction strategies. As an end of module exercise, students were asked to have dialogues about case studies of historical ethical dilemmas in synthetic biology.
Through lectures, students learned about the fundamentals of building models from processes to differential equations and about different kinds of biological controls that can be modeled. For in-class exercise, students practiced using SimBio to model systems like gene regulation pathways. Additionally, students had a lecture on macromolecular structure and the types of simulations that are available for folding these structures. As a in-class exercise, students used a software to fold a macromolecule of their choice (eg. SAR-CoV-2 spike protein 1, Insulin, or Ion Channel) and presented their findings to the class.
Students used the techniques they learned in the lectures and practiced through the exercises to complete a final project. For the project, students identified a problem that can be addressed with bioengineering, conceptualized a potential solution, presented their ideas in a 15 minute presentation, and provided feedback to peers.
Class attendance was recorded and contributed toward the course grading. By attending the classes either in-person or virtually, students were introduced to all the concepts needed to sufficiently complete exercises. Furthermore, in both modalities, students were able to collaborate with peers as well as receive immediate feedback on class exercises and the final project from the instructors during class time. However, students attending in-person had the opportunity to participate in more hands-on activities such as executing protocols in the laboratory.
Attendance was recorded through exit surveys.
Example of exit survey questions:
The course had four module exercises (each worth 15%) and one project (worth 30%) which were graded for completion. The final 10% of the grade was from attendance. The course was graded as Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory since it was an Intersession course, with Satisfactory earned by 70%+.
At the end, the students in the class submitted evaluations of the course through a survey designed by the university to compare all courses equally. This Synthetic Biology Design course scored on par with the mean scores of courses in the department and at the university.