This is one of the final courses in a series of three courses in molecular cell biology. In the first introductory course (UCSCIBIO11), you gained a lot of basic knowledge about the major characteristics of life on Earth. In the intermediate UCSCIBIO21 course, we explored the molecular world of the cell in more detail and learned to apply the knowledge to designing, interpreting, and presenting real-world data and scientific literature. This third course, Advanced Biotechnology (UCSCIBIO32), will focus on the implications of this knowledge; the course will cover theoretical and practical aspects of modern biotechnology, its large-scale applications, and its impact on society.
The highlights of UCSCIBIO32 are lectures and discussions with invited speakers from academia or industry in biotechnology. We will also debate on the topic of ethics in biotechnology, and at the end, you will try to develop your business idea to solve societally relevant issues in the second part of the course.
The course is divided into thematic parts devoted to general cloning methods and methods related to plant, animal, microbial, and biomedical biotechnology. Assignments are designed to help understand the practical aspects of the theoretical knowledge learned in lectures. You will get peer or teacher feedback on the first version of some of your assignments; this is meant to deepen your understanding of the lecture materials. In the second part of the course, where you work on the business idea, we will have lectures with invited speakers from industry and research fields related to biotechnology to help you get insight into how innovation works in biotechnology and how one could protect intellectual property.