A Broader Perspective

Wow - another two weeks already.  You know what they say; time flies when you're having fun.  In all seriousness though, this has definitely been one of my favorite classes so far this semester.  It started out a little slow for me because we started with material very similar to what we had already learned in iGEM but in the last two weeks we've started to branch out a little more.  In the back of our minds, we're still thinking about the impending, iGEM-esque 3 ideas presentation but the classwork has been taking a look at science and society which is an interesting perspective that I don't frequently consider in-depth.  Watching the recording of the Cambridge City Council meeting from the 70's regarding recombinant DNA research at Harvard was a huge eye opener as far as just how far biotechnology (and our perception of it) has come in the last few decades - especially considering how much room for development still remains.  It has also been really interesting to learn about the DIY bio movement and Genspace.  I'm a huge supporter of open source software and hardware, makerspaces and the like, so it's great to see that mentality spreading to the bioengineering side of things even though it does raise some interesting regulatory and ethical questions.  This increasing accessibility of biological tools is really cool to me personally because I remember only a few years ago reading books or watching TV shows where people were genetically engineering things and thinking how cool that was but then immediately thinking that there was no way I'd ever be able to do something like that - surely the technology isn't that good.  Sure we still have a ways to go but it is really awesome to think that I'm now at a place where I can fairly easily do something I used to think was out of reach.