Synthetic biology

The Synthetic Biology course aims to provide students with an overview of the recently-developed molecular tools that are used for the in vivo monitoring of cellular events and/or perturbation of biological systems. In particular, the course will provide an in-depth overview of the state-of-the-art methodologies and techniques used for the design and fabrication of biological components and systems that do not already exist in the natural world, and the re-design of existing biological systems.
This course focuses on two aspects of synthetic biology: i) engineering of cellular regulation - transcriptional, translational, post-translational and epigenetic (part 1); ii) de novo synthesis and engineering of protein-based tools and their applications (part 2).

At the end of the course the student will be knowledgeable on the state-of-the-art methodologies/techniques used to generate and/or to engineer biological tools, and will have learned several approaches for their in vivo applications in different cellular model systems. Moreover, the student will have developed the skills to critically evaluate a scientific research article.