Biotechnology Lessons

[Cassaundra Marley]

Thiscourse will examine the role of fear in shaping ideas about immigrants, asylum seekers, and refugees. We start from the notion that emotions are social formations with particular histories and political significance. We will refrain from assuming that fear is nothing more than a feeling or an automatic response and instead take it as a site that allows us to examine how psychological and legal experts together define and dispute what is normal, reasonable, credible, plausible, real, appropriate, and timely. The seminar will cover themes such as risk and threat, race and origin, pain and injury, confession and testimony, fiction and figuration, and personhood and representation. We will look at newspaper articles, social media content, legal opinions, case law, court transcripts, and psychological evaluations, as well as texts in politics, anthropology, sociology, philosophy, literature, comics, and films. Students will write a short essay on the politics of fear. Throughout the course, they will develop their toolkit to critically reflect on an emotion of their choice.

Painting and Acrylics is an introductory studio art course open to all students. In this class you will be exposed to a range of strategies and subject matter for painting with acrylics. Each week students will be shown new techniques and asked to put them into practice with class projects e.g., cloud painting, self-portraits, and making your own masterpiece. At the end of this course students will understand how to use acrylic paint to render any and all representational subject matter.

In this introductory class painting and collage techniques are explored and combined in order to expand visual language. Paint as a traditional medium is unified with the prefabricated nature of collage in order to create aesthetic harmony and produce sensations of volume, space, movement, and light on a flat surface. Various collage materials are pulled from magazines, newspapers, old books, cloth and found materials that interplay with acrylic paint applications.

This course explores the potential of your cell phone in working in various photography art practices, ranging from experimental to documentary-style photography. We will leverage the potential of the cell phone by delving into different genres through hands-on assignments, demo lessons, and discussions about artists working with this photography. We will merge a critical analysis of contemporary photography with a study of early forms of popular photography, examining the democratization of this medium. By completing our weekly assignments and lessons, you will learn to better articulate and convey ideas through photography, expand your technical and conceptual approach, and understand how we communicate through images.

This course covers the fundamentals of microbiology and encompasses the tiny world of microbes (bacteria, archaea, fungi, viruses, and more). How have microbes impacted human health and society? It turns out that we cannot live without microbes, but we also have first-hand experience over the last few years of just how deadly and life-altering microbes can be! In exploring microbiology, we will take a multi-disciplinary approach combining molecular genetics (how gene expression is regulated in both prokaryotes and eukaryotes), biochemistry, and immunology. We will also explore key advances in biotechnology that have been made possible through our discovery of microbes and how they work including cloning, PCR, and CRISPR. This course will offer an in-person laboratory component to allow students hands-on experience observing and working with bacteria and small eukaryotes and experimental design. Lecture materials will be pre-recorded and provided asynchronously so students can explore content at their pace, before in-person discussions, activities, and lab work.

Biology is increasingly making its way into various aspects of our lives and will continue to do so throughout the 21st century. Thus, understanding the concepts underlying the headlines and their implications is very important and can help us engage meaningfully with the changing world around us. This course will begin by teaching skills like data interpretation and critical evaluation of logical arguments. With that foundation in place, we will then use specific, real-world events such as the FDA approval of GMO salmon, the development of the COVID-19 vaccines, and the fight against MRSA to explore the concepts in biology that underlie them (e.g. genetic modification, mRNA and vaccine development, and antibiotic resistance). Each week, students will be assigned to read news articles and informational materials giving background knowledge about the subject at hand. Each class will consist of a mini-lecture and in-class learning activities. The class will build towards a final project consisting of a podcast-style audio report on a biological process studied in the course. This course requires no prior background knowledge in biology and is intended for anyone interested in better understanding recent developments in the world of biology. By taking this course, students will learn basic concepts in biology and develop the skills necessary to critically evaluate arguments and the scientific data underlying those arguments.

This course offers a comprehensive examination of the ecological and biological consequences of climate change on diverse species and ecosystems. Students will explore the adaptive responses of animals, plants, and microbiomes to shifting environmental conditions. Additionally, the course will address the dynamic alterations in species ranges, changes in biotic interactions, and the implications of climate change on endangered species and environmental justice. Throughout the course, students will engage in group discussions centered on assigned scientific papers, honing their skills in critical thinking, interpretation, and presentation of findings. The course aims to equip students with a robust understanding of climate change biology while fostering teamwork and communication skills essential for tackling complex environmental challenges.

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Predictions of how promising your prospects are within the life science sector vary widely. Statistics of unemployment for the US and UK highlight a dazzlingly high percentage of graduates or postgraduates landing outside the job market. For instance, in 2016, the Atlantic reported that 40% of PhD recipients in the US were left unemployed after graduation [1].

Nature magazine reported that possessing a scientific PhDs correlates with finding a more enjoyable job [2]. However, it also reports that roughly 20% of the 4,700 people surveyed in the UK and Canada received employment in industry. And the proportion that enters the biotechnology industry is likely even lower.

All is not doom and gloom though, especially in the UK. Vitae, part of the UK-based Careers Research and Advisory Centre, claims that six months after completion of their studies over 80% of doctoral graduates are working, noting less than 2% unemployment [3]. More recently, the UK graduate labour market statistics echoed these findings [4]: a 2017 publication documented that graduates and postgraduates had higher employment rates than non-graduates.

Instead, this mini-series aims to provide tips and advice from my own experience, without any unrealistic guarantee that one small change in your job search will land you your industry job. They encourage the idea that changing 1% in 100 areas is more effective than revolutionising 100% of a single aspect of your job hunt. In other words, incremental improvement in several aspects of your job, increasing the number of arrows in your quiver, will enhance the chances of reaching your job target.

The Science Entrepreneur Club (SEC) is a non-profit organisation of curious minds that aims to explore and unite the life science ecosystem by educating, inspiring and connecting. We give scientific entrepreneurs a network and a platform to showcase their innovative technologies, find investors and accelerate their company.

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The costs of meeting regulatory requirements and market restrictions guided by regulatory criteria are substantial impediments to the commercialization of transgenic crops. Although a cautious approach may have been prudent initially, we argue that some regulatory requirements can now be modified to reduce costs and uncertainty without compromising safety. Long-accepted plant breeding methods for incorporating new diversity into crop varieties, experience from two decades of research on and commercialization of transgenic crops, and expanding knowledge of plant genome structure and dynamics all indicate that if a gene or trait is safe, the genetic engineering process itself presents little potential for unexpected consequences that would not be identified or eliminated in the variety development process before commercialization. We propose that as in conventional breeding, regulatory emphasis should be on phenotypic rather than genomic characteristics once a gene or trait has been shown to be safe.

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