The strawberry DNA looked like white mucus. The scented e. coli smelled like bananas masked in plague. The pGRN results looked like someone sneezed in an agar plate. My initial thought when I experience these things is "GROSS!" but after getting over my silliness, I realize how the procedures leading to these products are innovative and quite beautiful.
I was initially worried about taking 20.020 in addition to my 4 other classes. I did well 1st semester, but that was with 4 classes and over the safety net of P/NR. Now, I'm out on the tightrope with a lot less to catch my grades if they fall, so naturally, I wouldn't be too excited about taking the 5-class plunge, but I think 20.020 is going to be entirely worth the extra time it'll require.
The course seems to be structured in such a way to ease students into all the rigors of course 20, starting off Week 1 labs with simple strawberry DNA extractions and moving through Week 2 with more complex procedures, like inserting plasmids into varying e. coli strains and observing the resulting phenotypic expression.
I enjoyed rattling off ideas about applications of biological engineering with my group today (and we came up with quite the list!), but it felt a little silly. I mean, I feel like these ideas should be based in knowledge of the practicality of the suggestions and of tools to bring those ideas to life, and we, as a class, are lacking in both of those respects.... But on the other hand, maybe it's the approaching of the worlds problems from a novice's uninformed perspective that is the greatest mechanism of innovation available. LOL, I don't know about any of that, but I'm excited to see where our Intro to 20 takes us next!
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