Nucleic Acid Engineering

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Contents

What is it?

Nucleic Acid Engineers, or synthetic biologists, approach the creation of new biological systems, focusing on finding how life works or how to use it to benefit society. It can be a biological approach such as inserting man-made DNA into a living cell or an engineering approach of building the new biological system as a platform for various technologies; and rewriting, rebuilding the natural systems to provide the engineered surrogates. One of the big challenges to engineering biological systems is that biology is both noisy and seemingly random.  That is, biological systems don’t always do things in a manner that is as predictable as an electrical circuit.  However, biology has its own organizing principles and properties that nucleic acid engineers seek to exploit (or overcome) whenever possible: taking advantage of millions of years of evolutionary pressure that every biological system has at its functional core.

How we use it?

Many nucleic acid engineers are Genetic Engineers: changing genes in an organism (like a bacterium) or exchanging genes between organisms.  Some of these Genetic Engineers also write computer codes to try and model and predict how gene expression will function in a complex environment.  However, there are other Synthetic Biologists that make use of the unique properties found in biology like Watson-Crick base-pairing, connective tissue plasticity or biological adhesion to come up with designs that use these properties directly or mimic them to “borrow” their functionality.  For SynBio (as the field is commonly called) it is always about gaining  function.

Career possibilities

Industrial careers are varied and can include biotechnology companies, material design firms, drug companies, energy producers and consultants, patent lawyers and investment advisors.  Synthetic Biology is still a very new field (except for the genetic engineering faction) and jobs are only starting to be more plentiful.  Many of these jobs are invented as part of efforts to commercialize research developments.

 

Example Curriculums From Students Specializing In Nucleic Acid Engineering

Student 1

Fall Semester Spring Semester
 BEE 5951: Master of Engineering Design Project  3-6  BEE 5952: Master of Engineering Design Project 3-6
 BEE 2600: Principles in Biological Engineering  3  BME 5600: Biotransport and Drug Delivery  3
 BEE 3310: Bio-Fluid Mechanics  4  MSE 4610: Biomedical Materials and Their Applications  3
 BEE 4550: Biologically Inspired Microsystems Engineering  3  BIOMG 4320: Survey of Cell Biology  3
 BIOMS 3150: Basic Immunology  3  BIOMI 4040: Pathogenic Bacteriology  2

 

Student 2

Fall Semester Spring Semester
 BEE 5951: Master of Engineering Design Project  3-6  BEE 5952: Master of Engineering Design Project 3-6
 BEE 4990: Undergraduate Research (transfer credits)  3  BME 4020: Electrical and Chemical Physiology  3
 BME 5400: Biomedical Computation  3  BIONB 4910: Principles of Neurophysiology  4
 BME 6670: Nanobiotechnology  3
 BME 7310: Advanced Biomedical Engineering Analysis of Biological Systems  3
 BIOMG 3850: Developmental Biology  3

 

Past MEng Thesis Titles

  • Building Autonomy into a Cell-Free Protein Producing Gel: Integrating T7 RNA Polymerase
  • ATP-binding aptamer-incorporated DNA hydrogel
  • Engineering Functionalized DNA Nanospheres for Bioengineering Applications

 

For more information about LuoLabs, contact Dan Luo at dl79@cornell.edu or 607-255-8193 (Tel).

 

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