Important
- Academic Consideration for Coursework Request Form – You must submit this form if you miss more than one test, as the grading scheme counts the best 10 out of 11 tests.
- Wheaton’s Law – The rule of class behavior emphasizing that you must conduct yourself as a responsible, courteous adult.
- Reading the Syllabus – You are explicitly mandated to carefully read the course syllabus to understand expectations and academic ethics.
- Somatic cell modifications – Genetic changes made to somatic cells are not passed on to the next generation, unlike germline modifications.
- Course Textbook – The required text is Introduction to Biotechnology, 4th Edition by William J. Thieman and Michael A. Palladino.
Core concepts
- Learning Outcomes: Statements setting out what a learner is expected to know, understand, and be able to do as a result of a process of learning, encompassing areas of knowledge, practical skills, attitudes, and higher-order thinking.
- Stages of Biotechnology: Spans from Ancient biotechnology (domesticating plants and animals for food and shelter), to Classical biotechnology (using fermentation for food production and medicine), to Modern biotechnology (manipulating genetic information via genetic engineering).
- Somatic vs. Germline Modifications: Somatic changes affect only the individual and are not inherited by offspring, whereas germline changes involve reproductive cells and are heritable.
- Genetic Therapy vs. Human Enhancement: Therapy aims to cure or treat medical conditions (such as fixing a mutant β-globin gene in Sickle Cell Disease using CRISPR), whereas enhancement aims to improve or augment human traits (such as “designer babies”).
- Pre-Implantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD): An advanced genetic testing process used to choose the healthiest embryo during in vitro fertilization cycles.
- Unibabies: The theoretical process where sperm and eggs are produced from a single donor’s non-reproductive cells (like skin cells converted to induced pluripotent stem cells) to create an embryo.
- Genetic Determinism: The flawed concept that our genes strictly determine who we are at every physical, emotional, and behavioral level, when in reality, phenotype is a combination of genotype and environment.
- Formative vs. Summative Assessment: Formative assessment is an “assessment for learning” designed to increase quality, whereas summative assessment is an “assessment of learning” (like graded tests) designed to measure quality.
- Personalized Medicine: A medical approach that acknowledges individual variability, utilizing DNA testing and microarrays to target conventional or alternative drugs to patients based on their specific genetic predisposition.
Theories and Frameworks
- Feynman Method: An effective learning strategy that involves explaining the topic you have just learned as if you were teaching it to someone else.
- Testing Effect (Retrieval Practice Effect): A psychological construct demonstrating that taking tests or practicing information retrieval results in a significantly higher percentage of correct test questions compared to other learning methods like repeated study or concept mapping.
- George Grant’s Technology Philosophy: A framework noting that modern civilization merges the activities of knowing and making, and that technology (like a computer) does not impose on us the ways it must be used.
- Cell Theory: A foundational biological framework established by Rudolf Virchow stating that all living things are composed of cells, chemical reactions take place within cells, all cells originate from pre-existing cells, and cells contain hereditary information.
Notable Individuals
- Victoria Gray: Volunteered for the first clinical attempt to use the gene-editing technique CRISPR to treat sickle cell disease.
- He Jiankui: Chinese scientist sentenced to three years in jail for his role in creating the first genome-edited (CRISPR) babies.
- Richard Feynman: Nobel Physicist who developed the explanation-based learning strategy known as the Feynman Method.
- Henry L. Roediger III: Researcher who published work on the “Testing Effect” and how retrieval practice improves learning.
- Jacob Bronowski: Stated that every judgment in science stands on the edge of error and is deeply personal.
- Carl Sagan: Highlighted the danger of arranging a global civilization profoundly dependent on science and technology that almost no one truly understands.
- Leon Kass: Noted that our political conflicts about biotechnology fundamentally revolve around what is right and wrong, and what is desirable versus dangerous.
- Giacomo Pylarini: Administered the first variolation in Constantinople in 1701.
- Edward Jenner: Successfully performed the first cowpox inoculation on a boy in 1797.
- Anton von Leeuwenhoek: Contributed to classical science through his highly detailed microscopic drawings of spermatozoa and cells.
- Rudolf Virchow: Formulated the foundational Cell Theory in 1858.
- Gregor Johan Mendel: A self-taught scientist who discovered foundational genetic inheritance principles through pea plant experiments in 1856.
- Thomas Hunt Morgan: Proved in 1910 that genes are carried on chromosomes, establishing the basis of modern genetics.
- Rosalind Elsie Franklin: Produced the vital X-ray fiber diffraction pattern of pure B-form DNA in 1953.
- James Watson and Francis Crick: Proposed that DNA consisted of two antiparallel, helical strands forming a stable duplex.
- Stanley Cohen, Annie Chang, Herbert Boyer, and Robert Helling: Published the first construction of biologically functional bacterial plasmids in vitro in 1973.
- William Osler: A physician who famously noted that variability is the law of life and that no two individuals react to diseases alike.
- Sydney Brenner: Observed that scientific progress depends sequentially on new techniques, new discoveries, and new ideas.
- J. Craig Venter: His research institute constructed the first self-replicating, synthetic bacterial cell in 2010.