BE.180

BE.180 -- Biological Engineering Programming

BE.180 is a new course that will be offered for the first time in the Spring of 2006. This is a required course for second semester sophomores who are majoring in Biological Engineering. Drew Endy is leading the development of the course.

The current course description is: "Example problems from biological engineering are used to develop structured computer programming skills and explore the theory and practice of complex systems design and construction."

After thinking a bit, talking with Tom Knight, and thinking some more, the theme of the course is starting to focus on the idea of designing and coding the CAD environment for Biological Engineering (aka, Engineering of Biology. aka, "synthetic biology: an engineering technology based on living systems." The way this might work is for a different CAD environment feature to be used each week as a motivating problem for exploring concepts in structured system design and implementation, and computer programming. As a result of this approach, there may not be any *single* language used in the course -- we'll use the languages best suited to the problems.

Current Tasks

1. Collect list of features that can serve as motivating examples
2. Prioirtize list of features, evaluating on coverage of concepts, fun factor, and feasibility

Next Planning Meeting

1. TBA & TBD (October 2005)

Feature Sandbox (add features ideas here, no idea is bad in the sandbox)

1. Analysis of Sequence Data for Patterns / Features
   1. Manipulation of data/text
   2. Pattern Recognition, Logic
2. Tuning Codon Usage
   1. Codon tables
   2. Expression optimization
   3. Watermarking/Sign your work
   4. Restriction site removal/addition
3. Some sort of graphing/visual depiction
4. Some sort of modeling/dynamic systems

Prioritized Feature List

(vote for features here. HINT: use your intitials)