Competitive Student Design of Synthetic Biological Finite State Machines

根据该项目，将在五所大学(麻省理工学院、德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校、波士顿大学、加州理工学院和普林斯顿大学)传播和合作教授一门关于工程合成生物系统的设计和制造的新课程。这一努力类似于20世纪70年代末和80年代初超大规模集成电路设计课程的最初普及。具体地说，在项目期间，每所学校的教职员工将在麻省理工学院花一周时间完善和规划课程，每所学校的学生将花一个夏天竞争(跨学校)设计和建造遗传编码的有限状态机，之后所有学生和教职员工将参加一个项目范围的盛会，届时将评估每个学校的项目并颁发设计奖项。此外，在比赛期间，每所学校的学生将得到一个项目范围的标准生物部件注册的支持。这个多学校、多项目的设计竞赛是此类注册中心的第一个多地点测试，并将创建一个开放的、社区范围的资源，支持合成生物学的研究和教育。这一努力还将产生：(I)一批能够扩大支持生物系统工程的教育计划的范围和规模的教师，(Ii)一组对生物系统设计的现状和局限性有实际经验的学生，以及(Iii)一组扩大的标准生物部分，更多的学校和研究人员将能够从这些部分中获得支持，以支持他们自己的教育倡议和研究。

Under this project a novel course on the design and fabrication of engineered, synthetic biological systems will be disseminated and co-taught at five universities (MIT, UT Austin, Boston University, Caltech, and Princeton). This effort is analogous to the initial proliferation of VLSI design courses that took place in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In specific, during the project period faculty from each school will spend one week at MIT refining and planning the course, students at each school will spend a summer competing (across schools) to design and build genetically-encoded finite state machines, after which all students and faculty will attend a project-wide jamboree whereat each school's project will be evaluated and design prizes awarded. In addition, during the competition students at each school will be supported by a project-wide Registry of Standard Biological Parts. This multi-school, multi-project design competition is the first multi-site test of such a Registry, and will result in the creation of an open, community-wide resource supporting research and education on synthetic biology. Also resulting from this effort will be (i) an initial set of teachers who are capable of expanding the scope and scale of educational programs that support the engineering of biological systems, (ii) a set of students who have practical experience with the current state and limitations in biological systems design, and (iii) an expanded set of standard biological parts, from which many more schools and researchers will be able to draw upon in support of their own educational initiatives and research.