Research and Teaching Blog
10 Posts with tag: synthetic biology
DIY thermal cycler
This post is way long overdue. In the Fall of 2008, (or was it 2007?) I taught a small module in the ABE 221 course dealing with automation in Biological Engineering. My hope was to create a home-made thermal cycler for less than $1000. Of course many people in the DIYBio community have constructed thermal cyclers for way less, and truly, you probably don't need to pay more than $300-400 (perhaps even less) to build a reasonably good quality ...
Tags: Do it yourself Biology , Instrumentation , labjack , programming , python , synthetic biologyiGEM 2010 Group Photo
Here is a photo of the 2010 iGEM team
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igem
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synthetic biology
iGEM 2009 Illini
The iGEM 2009 teams from the University of Illinois. Take a look at IMPTools the winning entry in the tools track at iGEM2009.
Tags: igem , synthetic biologyBhalerao Lab in the Media
We've been getting a lot of media attention over the past week. Here are some links to the online articles.
Tags: synthetic biologyCan corn fix nitrogen?
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Following a news release by LeAnn Ormsby based on our work, we have seen a flurry of media activity. These include a brief interviews by WICD15, the local ABC news channel, a couple radio interviews, a funny-cute news piece by NSF as well as the interview by FeedStuffs below
So, can corn be really taught how to fix nitrogen? The short answer is, yes, we believe so. The longer, more qualified answer is that there are ...
Tags: publications , synthetic biologyiGEM IMPTools
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Tags: igem , synthetic biologyRA Position Available
A position is open, available immediately, in the Bhalerao Lab for a quarter time MS student who would like to work on synthetic biology, in the general area of biofuels and metabolic engineering. Interested candidates should be familiar with basic molecular biology techniques such as PCR, gel electrophoresis and DNA manipulation. Contact Dr. Bhalerao for more information.
Tags: Positions available , synthetic biologyDNA Counters
In order to 'program' biology, do we need a different programming paradigm? Or can we co-opt programming paradigms from computer sciences?
The recent issue of Science features an article by Friedland et al., outlines two different synthetic gene network counters, one based on the delay inherent in the process of gene expression, while the other based on cascaded FLP-FRT recombinase pattern. In doing so, they have shown a viable implementation of a more reliable 'kill switch' for synthetic gene networks ...
Network graphs for KEGG
Here's a graph of all the compounds connected by various reactions in the KEGG database. I used the flat file provided at the KEGG FTP site which lists the reactions including their reversibility (or lack thereof). The file was parsed with Python, networkx and pydot, and the graph was generated using Graphviz using the neato algorithm. Here's the link
Tags: programming , synthetic biology
Evolution of synthetic biology
My review article entitled, "Synthetic gene networks: The next wave in biotechnology" just got published in Trends in Biotechnology (Pubmed link).
One of the questions in synthetic biology, I think worth exploring, is how does the knowledge of evolutionary biology inform the feasibility, design and implementation of synthetic biology. The inspiration for this question was this PNAS article by Beiko et al. The suggest that some pathways seem more likely to have a history of horizontal gene transfer (HGT) than ...