Principles of synthetic biology: a MOOC for an emerging field
Synthetic biology requires students and scientists to draw upon knowledge and expertise from many disciplines. While this diversity is one of the field’s primary strengths, it also makes it challenging for newcomers to acquire the background knowledge necessary to thrive. To address this gap, we dev...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Oxford University Press (OUP)
2020
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| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/125289 |
| _version_ | 1826199852538658816 |
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| author | Anderson, Daniel Jones, Ross D. Weiss, Ron |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Biological Engineering |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Biological Engineering Anderson, Daniel Jones, Ross D. Weiss, Ron |
| author_sort | Anderson, Daniel |
| collection | MIT |
| description | Synthetic biology requires students and scientists to draw upon knowledge and expertise from many disciplines. While this diversity is one of the field’s primary strengths, it also makes it challenging for newcomers to acquire the background knowledge necessary to thrive. To address this gap, we developed a course that provides a structured approach to learning the biological principles and theoretical underpinnings of synthetic biology. Our course, Principles of Synthetic Biology (PoSB), was released on the massively open online course platform edX in 2016. PoSB seeks to teach synthetic biology through five key fundamentals: (i) parts and layers of abstraction, (ii) biomolecular modeling, (iii) digital logic abstraction, (iv) circuit design principles and (v) extended circuit modalities. In this article, we describe the five fundamentals, our formulation of the course, and impact and metrics data from two runs of the course through the edX platform. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T11:27:10Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/125289 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T11:27:10Z |
| publishDate | 2020 |
| publisher | Oxford University Press (OUP) |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1252892022-10-01T03:43:24Z Principles of synthetic biology: a MOOC for an emerging field Anderson, Daniel Jones, Ross D. Weiss, Ron Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Biological Engineering Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Synthetic biology requires students and scientists to draw upon knowledge and expertise from many disciplines. While this diversity is one of the field’s primary strengths, it also makes it challenging for newcomers to acquire the background knowledge necessary to thrive. To address this gap, we developed a course that provides a structured approach to learning the biological principles and theoretical underpinnings of synthetic biology. Our course, Principles of Synthetic Biology (PoSB), was released on the massively open online course platform edX in 2016. PoSB seeks to teach synthetic biology through five key fundamentals: (i) parts and layers of abstraction, (ii) biomolecular modeling, (iii) digital logic abstraction, (iv) circuit design principles and (v) extended circuit modalities. In this article, we describe the five fundamentals, our formulation of the course, and impact and metrics data from two runs of the course through the edX platform. National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Grant 1521925) 2020-05-18T18:43:00Z 2020-05-18T18:43:00Z 2019-05 2020-03-19T12:23:05Z Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle 1939-7267 1939-3784 https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/125289 Anderson, Daniel A. et al. “Principles of synthetic biology: a MOOC for an emerging field.” Synthetic Biology 4 (2019): ysz010 © 2019 The Author(s) en 10.1093/SYNBIO/YSZ010 Synthetic Biology Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ application/pdf Oxford University Press (OUP) Oxford University Press |
| spellingShingle | Anderson, Daniel Jones, Ross D. Weiss, Ron Principles of synthetic biology: a MOOC for an emerging field |
| title | Principles of synthetic biology: a MOOC for an emerging field |
| title_full | Principles of synthetic biology: a MOOC for an emerging field |
| title_fullStr | Principles of synthetic biology: a MOOC for an emerging field |
| title_full_unstemmed | Principles of synthetic biology: a MOOC for an emerging field |
| title_short | Principles of synthetic biology: a MOOC for an emerging field |
| title_sort | principles of synthetic biology a mooc for an emerging field |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/125289 |
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