Postgraduate Course: Tools for Synthetic Biology (PGBI11092)

Course Outline
School	School of Biological Sciences	College	College of Science and Engineering
Credit level (Normal year taken)	SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate)	Availability	Not available to visiting students
SCQF Credits	10	ECTS Credits	5
Summary	Tools for Synthetic Biology will teach the new tools and techniques being developed and employed in the rapidly expanding field of synthetic biology. The course will seek to teach students the theory behind the methods; encouraging understanding, which will allow new uses and application in alternative areas to become apparent.
Course description	1 Introduction, engineering perspectives, grand challenges. Alistair Elfick (School of Engineering) 2 Standards and metrics, genetic logic and analog circuits. Baojun Wang (SBS) 3 DNA synthesis and assembly methods. Chris French (SBS) 4 Next generation sequencing. Sander Granneman (SBS) 5 Expanding the genetic code. Sebastian Greiss (SBMS) 6 CRISPR-Cas systems. Elise Cachat (SBS) 7 Protein design and redesign. Louise Horsfall (SBS) 8 RNA switches. Sander Granneman (SBS) 9 Synthetic genomes. Dirk Kleinjan (SBS) 10 Design Project: round table discussions. Elise Cachat (SBS) 11 Design Project: drop-in session. Elise Cachat (SBS) + Visit of the Edinburgh Genome Foundry. Hille Tekotte (SBS)

Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites		Co-requisites
Prohibited Combinations		Other requirements	None

Course Delivery Information

Academic year 2017/18, Not available to visiting students (SS1)		Quota: 38
Course Start	Semester 1
Timetable	Timetable
Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info)	Total Hours: 100 ( Lecture Hours 10, Seminar/Tutorial Hours 10, Formative Assessment Hours 4, Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 2, Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours 74 )
Assessment (Further Info)	Written Exam 0 %, Coursework 100 %, Practical Exam 0 %
Additional Information (Assessment)	The course will be assessed by: - A course blog which will require the students to report in 250 words (MAXIMUM) the key learning points from each week. (30%) - A 2000 word design project to present the details of the discussed synthetic biology tool/approach and assess its application to address a new research question (70%)
Feedback	- Design Project: Written Feedback - Blog: Formative feedback will be in the form of comments added to the blog by Dr Elise Cachat, as required, over duration of the course. See LEARN for more details.
No Exam Information

Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to: Analytical skills, ability to assess the pros and cons of new methods Capacity to recognise the opportunities presented by new biological discoveries Ability to look at pressing problems from the perspective that these may have an innovative bio-based solution