Share this page!

Enter Twitter Thread URL to Unroll

Needs to be the full URL like: https://twitter.com/threadreaderapp/status/1644127596119195649

How to get URL link on Twitter App

  1. On the Twitter thread, click on or icon on the bottom
  2. Click again on or Share Via icon
  3. Click on Copy Link to Tweet
  4. Paste it above and click "Unroll Thread"!
  5. More info at Twitter Help
Niko McCarty 🧫 Profile picture
@NikoMcCarty
Aug 8 • 11 tweets • 4 min read Twitter logo Read on Twitter
🧬8 Free Courses to Learn Synthetic Biology

Yesterday, I gave my ten book picks. Today, it's all about online videos and lectures.

Here are my recommendations, in order of increasing difficulty: twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
1. What is Synthetic Biology? By @EngBioRC.

A high-level & approachable introduction to the field, with links to excellent essays and videos from George Church, Andrew Hessel, Suzanne Lee, and other pioneers.

ebrc.org/what-is-synbio/
2. Stanford's Introduction to Bioengineering. By @DrewEndy & @jennbrophy7.

Probably the best, modern video series on synthetic biology, health, evolution, and associated tools. All of the lectures are available online, for free.

introbioe.stanford.edu/lectures-inter…
3. iBiology Video Series

This is my personal favorite.

It has in-depth lectures from many great scientists on different applications of synthetic biology, including gene circuits, gene drives, synthetic cells, metabolic engineering, and much more.

ibiology.org/playlists/synt…
4. Principles of Synthetic Biology. By Ron Weiss & Adam Arkin.

A classic course, available on edX. It includes interactive, digital exercises. Its focus is on modern techniques in DNA assembly, and how to build and model biological circuits.

edx.org/learn/computer…
5. How to Grow (Almost) Anything. By David Kong.

A legendary course at MIT that teaches people — anywhere — how to engineer biology using robots.

I can't find online videos, but the materials include many useful links.

htgaa2022.notion.site/HTGAA-2022-d39…
More details on the course: nature.com/articles/s4158…
6. Lectures on basic lab methods. By the Canadian Synthetic Biology Education Research Group.

A YouTube channel that includes videos about how to clone DNA, how to model gene circuits, the basics of protein design, and some other useful topics.

youtube.com/@csberg5856/vi…
7. Biological Circuit Design. By Justin Bois & @ElowitzLab at Caltech.

Simply the best course on gene circuits. Lectures are presented as Jupyter notebooks and all exercises are given in Python. Highly recommend.

biocircuits.github.io
8. Physical Biology of the Cell. By Rob Phillips at Caltech.

An outstanding course that accompanies a textbook of the same name. Each lecture has been recorded & posted online.

All exercises are public & given in Python notebooks. Take this class.

rpgroup.caltech.edu/aph161/syllabus
I'm publishing a very large guide to synthetic biology tomorrow.

Subscribe here to get it: readcodon.com

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
　

Keep Current with Niko McCarty 🧫

Niko McCarty 🧫 Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @NikoMcCarty

Niko McCarty 🧫 Profile picture
Aug 7
🧬📚 10 Books to Learn Synthetic Biology

The field is so broad and moves so fast — DNA synthesis, gene circuits, protein design! — that it can be hard to know where to get started.

Here are the books that I recommend, in order. 🧵 twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
1. The Machinery of Life
By David Goodsell

To engineer biology, you first need to understand its basic contours: How DNA, RNA & proteins work together to coordinate the behaviors of a cell.

This book is a gentle, visual introduction.
amazon.com/Machinery-Life…
2. Cell Biology by the Numbers (free)
By Ron Milo & Rob Phillips.

A basic grasp of biophysics will help you build mental models to engineer cells. This book covers the basics: How big is a protein? How fast is transcription? How do cells power it all?

https://t.co/KaiJSFVXgBbook.bionumbers.org
Image
Read 12 tweets
Niko McCarty 🧫 Profile picture
Jul 8
🧬 30 Days of Great Biology Papers.

From the origins of the genetic code to pioneering work on circadian rhythms...these are my favorite snapshots from the history of biology.

All the papers — and explanations — in a single thread: 🧵
Day 1

"Thoughts About Biology," James Bonner, 1960.

Day 2

"Bmp4 and Morphological Variation of Beaks in Darwin's Finches," by Abzhanov et al. (2004)

Read 32 tweets
Niko McCarty 🧫 Profile picture
Jun 3
David Goodsell's paintings beautifully depict proteins and living cells.

Here's how to visualize a protein in this style. In under 5 minutes.🧵 ImageImage
The first image, above, is Cas9. Some domains are highlighted.

The second image is by David Goodsell.

Step 1. Download PyMOL. It's free for the first 30 days, at least.

pymol.org/dokuwiki/doku.…
Step 2. Find your protein.

Go to rcsb.org and search. I entered "Cas9" and selected 4CMP, entitled "Crystal structure of S. pyogenes Cas9."

Other structures show Cas9 in complex with a guide RNA. Image
Read 11 tweets
Niko McCarty 🧫 Profile picture
Mar 31
There have been an incredible number of gene-editing advances (including in delivery) over the last three days.

Here are 7 of them...🧵
1. Start with delivery.

Feng Zhang's group developed "programmable" injectors that can deliver protein payloads in mice + human cells with "efficiencies approaching 100%"

Delivered Cas9 & base editors. You've probably already seen this one on Twitter.

nature.com/articles/s4158…
2. Inhalable nanoparticles, packaged with mRNA or CRISPR systems, efficiently edit lung cells.

720 ionizable lipids were tested to make the ✨perfect✨ particles. High editing efficiencies in airway epithelial cells (which are normally hard to target.)

nature.com/articles/s4158…
Read 9 tweets
Niko McCarty 🧫 Profile picture
Feb 5
🖭🖭 A Brief History of Parafilm 🖭🖭

"Cling wrap on steroids." "Duct tape of science." "The forbidden lab cheese." Parafilm has many names.

But what is this stuff? Where did it come from? And can you actually eat it? 🧵

cell.substack.com/p/parafilm
Despite a booming number of memes, the history of this wonder material is shrouded in obscurity.

To understand parafilm, we must go way back — 200 years back — to the dawn of paraffin and oil wells.

Paraffin Origin 🕯️

In 1830, a tar-obsessed man named Carl Reichenbach cooled petroleum and watched a layer of wax form on top.

He called this paraffin, from the Latin for 'parum' and 'affinis,' meaning 'very little' and 'lacking affinity.'

The guy's got a nice, little smirk.🔻
Read 18 tweets
Niko McCarty 🧫 Profile picture
Feb 1
The wacky history of glow-in-the-dark plants 🌱

A few years ago, "Glowing Plants" raised $484,000 on Kickstarter. Backlash followed and the platform banned gene-editing projects.

The original company died in 2017, but others took their place.

These are the highlights. 🧵 Image
Our story begins in molecular biology's golden era, 1986.

A small cadre of biologists & chemists at UCSD reported, in @ScienceMagazine, the "stable expression of the firefly luciferase gene in...transgenic plants."

The results were impressive.

science.org/doi/10.1126/sc… Image
Decades later, in 2010, a group from Indiana University took up the spiritual torch of that initial project.

Specifically, they took all six genes from a firefly's lux operon, and ported them into tobacco plants.

The plants glowed, but...meh.
doi.org/10.1371/journa… Image
Read 26 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

Send Email!

:(