R06: Molecular Programming

Synthetic biology is a topic in the overlap of biology and engineering. The field reached a breakthrough in the year 2000 when the first synthetic biological circuits were made (capable of elementary logic operations). Not long after the invention of the basic circuit, researchers began to trying to implement programmable computers in this biological medium.

In this reading assignment, you'll interpret a popular press article about a programming language for biological computers as well as extract clues from the original research paper that inspired the popular press article. To find details in the research papers, it should be enough to use your pdf reader to search for phrases and look for evidence that supports one answer over another.

Read the popular press article: Synthetic Biology Gets a New Molecular Programming Language Called CRN++ (from October 2018)

Read the abstract of the research paper: CRN++: Molecular Programming Language (from September 2018)

Be prepared to find definitions in the pdf of the paper itself: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1809.07430.pdf