2020(S09) Lecture:week 8
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Week 8 Tuesday
Challenge: Parts
Part 1: Poetic Parts
This challenge was inspired by This American Life #354: Mistakes Were Made
Consider the content of ‘This is Just to Say” a poem by William Carlos Williams
Poem 1
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
The poem is often taught in poetry classes and often spoofed. Consider, for instance, these 2 spoofs by Kenneth Koch:
Poem 2
Last evening
we went dancing
and I broke your leg
Forgive me
I was clumsy and
I wanted you here
in the wards
where I am the doctor
Poem 3
I chopped down the house that you had been saving to live in next summer.
I am sorry, but it was morning, and I had nothing to do
and its wooden beams were so inviting.
And one more spoof from the blog somewhere in the suburbs
Poem 4
I have dried
the shirt
made of 100% cotton
that was on your floor
and which
you were probably
planning
to air dry
Forgive me
if you had sorted
your own laundry
it would not be
so short
and so small
If you wanted to write your own spoof of the William Carlos Williams poem, you might begin by comparing the structure of these four poems. As a starting point they can be broken into 5 elements, namely
- 2 part situation
- “forgive me,” and
- 2 part explanation.
For each poem, these elements are:
| Situation (part 1) | Situation (part 2) | Forgive me | Explanation (part 1) | Explanation (part 2) |
| I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox | and which you were probably saving for breakfast | Forgive me | they were delicious | so sweet and so cold |
| Last evening we went dancing | and I broke your leg | Forgive me | I was clumsy | and I wanted you here in the wards where I am the doctor |
| I chopped down the house | that you had been saving to live in next summer. | I am sorry, | but it was morning, and I had nothing to do | and its wooden beams were so inviting. |
| I have dried the shirt made of 100% cotton that was on your floor | and which you were probably planning to air dry | Forgive me | if you had sorted your own laundry | it would not be so short and so small |
Mix & Match Poetry
Now we can try to swap these poetic elements to see what interesting and clever spoofs we write. How about:
| Situation (part 1) | Situation (part 2) | Forgive me | Explanation (part 1) | Explanation (part 2) |
| I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox | and I broke your leg | Forgive me | but it was morning, and I had nothing to do | and I wanted you here in the wards where I am the doctor |
That seems to work but is it better? Let's try again:
| Situation (part 1) | Situation (part 2) | Forgive me | Explanation (part 1) | Explanation (part 2) |
| I chopped down the house | and which you were probably planning to air dry | Forgive me | they were delicious | it would not be so short and so small |
Well shoot, that's horrible. For one thing: It doesn't say anything understandable---this can be broadly described as a problem of functional compostion. For another thing: the connection between the different elements is, well, "awkward" at best---this can be broadly described as a problem of physical composition. If physical and functional composition of poems were working perfectly then every part would grammatically connect to the ones that flank it, and the meaning of the connected pieces would be interpretable at worst and clear at best.
Part 2: Genetic Parts
The physical and functional assembly of the poetic parts can be mapped to biological engineering once we define what a genetic "part" is. Let's start by extending what we did with the William Carlos Williams poem, namely let's consider a few natural genetic compositions, see what common elements compose them, and then try to bin these so we might compose new genetic elements by mixing and matching parts.
The bacterial lac operon is one we're already familiar with from our conversation with Jon Beckwith earlier in the term.
There are several genes encoded by this composition. LacI is made and we can see it's flanked by a promoter and a terminator. Lac Z, Y, and A are also made and they are flanked by a promoter + an operator on one end and a terminator on the other. So some genetic parts we might consider naming are:
- promoter
- operator
- protein-coding gene
- transcriptional terminator
Recombinant DNA technology gives us great power to move pieces of DNA around but it doesn't answer all the questions we might have about the resulting composition. For instance, are promoters/operators/genes and terminators all the parts we need to write a genetic program. Would the promoter that's in front of LacI make sense in front of LacZ, Y, and A? Is there something important about the junction of the parts? An introduction to systematic examination and nomenclature of genetic parts, watch Device dude and Systems Sally's introduction to Parts
Part 3: The Registry of Standard Biological Parts
The animation ends with a screen shot from the BioBricks Foundation a not-for-profit organization that "encourages the development and responsible use of technologies based on BioBrick™ standard DNA parts that encode basic biological functions." BioBricks™ represent one kind of standard biological parts, standardized to enable reliable physical composition.
Just as we mixed and matched poetic elements, here are some mixed and matched genetic elements made from BioBrick™ parts.
Just as we could identify "forgive me"-ish elements in the "this is just to say poems" we can see common elements in these genetic compositions: the green arrow element which is = a promoter, but which comes in different flavors (I13452, R0040 or R0011), the red stop signs = transcriptional terminators (B0010, B0012).
The part numbers as well as the DNA itself are collected at the Registry of Standard Biological Parts.
For your final project in this class, you will enter a part into the registry. We'll show you some good parts and some good documentation in class so you can model your work on those examples.
Before tomorrow's studio time
If there are outstanding issues related to the system you're working on for your project be sure everyone on your team knows how you'll solve the issue(s) and make a plan to come to studio tomorrow with materials for finishing the system overview and getting good work done on the device list and the timing diagram.
Week 8 Studio
Part 1:
Part 2:
Week 8 Thursday
Challenge:
As much as we'd all like to have unlimited amounts of time and funding, few of us do. Let's warm up for today's lecture-time work with two quick conversion challenges.
Part 1: take me away!
Spring Break has just passed but who wouldn't mind another getaway. Maybe even for just a day--skip classes on Friday and come back late Saturday. All of Sunday to catch up. Hmm. Delta has a direct flight to Bermuda. Kayak.com....
- Flight 508 departs Logan Friday at 8:53 AM and arrives at Bermuda International at noon then
- Flight 507 leaves BDA Saturday at 4:35 PM, back at Logan at 5:50...in time for Saturday dinner.
Airfare alone is $371. Should I take the T or a cab to Logan? Take 10 minutes to decide as a group if you'd travel by T or taxi to the airport. Be sure to keep track of your reasons that favor one or make you disinclined to the other. After 10 minutes of work on this challenge, we'll hear the choice and the top 2 reasons from each group.
Part 2: better to be lucky than good?
Consider once more the Melbourne 2007 iGEM project. In a series of questions at the end of their presentation, the team gets asked about any changes to the gas vesicles device that might allow gas-filled cells to become even more buoyant. Their answer speaks to some scientific work others have done to understand the vesicle-encoding operon, research that has shown at least one gene in the operon is a negative regulator. By deleting that gene, the Melbourne team thinks they might make their cells even more buoyant. If you and your team were the Melbourne team, what would you do with this information?
Here are some options. You can consider these or others, but weigh them in terms of their associated cost (both time and money).
- Use the entire gas vesicle operon to get the basic Coliform system working then tweak the system later to improve it.
- Wait to assemble your system until you can perform experiments to know more about each gene in the operon.
- Divide the team in half, with some launching into the project with the DNA as is, and others studying it and refining it.
- Spend one week in the library to read all you can about these vesicles and then decide.
- Place a DNA synthesis order for the full operon (6 kilobases) as well as every single gene knockout and double gene knockout.
After 10 minutes we will hear back from each group about their preferred strategy for optimizing time and money.
Mapping these ideas to your project
Now it's time to look at the list of devices you have identified as part of your project (some of you may have a full list of needed devices and some of you will have only a partial list, in which case you'll have to consider these ideas now and then revisit them when your device list is complete). What might factor into the cost and time of assembling the devices into your working system? Do you know all you need to know about how they work? Are there easy ways to find out more? Do the devices already exist or will you have to make them yourself? You might want to make a chart that lists your degree of confidence in each device, where confidence is tempered by its cost/time/source/description and perhaps safety/security concerns...something we will return to next week.
Generate a list or table that might be useful as part of your Tech Spec Review next week.
