Biological Circuit Engineering Laboratory (BioCEL) - A New Course Proposal

This project will develop an innovative new course to train students in the computational and experimental aspects of the emerging discipline of synthetic biology. Unlike traditional engineering disciplines, the principles which guide the operation of biological systems involve parallelized systems and the messy guiding hand of evolution. In electrical systems, individual components can be isolated from each other, connected only through defined physical wires, and replicated to create complex digital processing. In contrast, biological systems are "wired" via chemical interactions and thus require orthogonal biochemical parts. Furthermore, there are fundamental limits to the number of parts that can be encoded in a single cell which means that the digital abstraction restricts the maximum level of complexity that can be achieved. Thus, in biological circuit design, there are multiple layers that need to be addressed, ranging from fundamental part creation to modeling and to higher-level design abstractions. These are integrated concepts that the proposed course aims to address, as they are not currently being taught to students at MIT or around the country in a cohesive form.