CPE190   Engineering with Living Systems 1   (10 credits)

Description

As we face some of the emerging challenges of this century, from global pandemics, the environment to energy, water and health, it has become increasingly evident that engineering biological systems represent some of the most sustainable and advanced solutions. To progress these innovative approaches, there is an increasing need to train the next generation of engineers with knowledge of fundamental science applied with chemical engineering principles.   This module will provide students with knowledge of fundamental biological processes, whilst enabling a clear link to how these are exploited within industry for biomanufacturing. More specifically,  this module is an introduction to biological engineering covering the basics of host cell systems (e.g. yeast, E. coli) exploited within the biomanufacturing industry i.e. cell types, structure, function. The working of the cell will be introduced; cell chemistry (biochemistry) and cell structure (macromolecules). These will be described in terms of products (e.g. protein biopharmaceuticals, fatty acid fuels), cell cultivation (basic and industrial microbiology, fermentation) and methods to improve cell productivities e.g. metabolic engineering, synthetic biology. Modelling of fermentation processes will be expanded through enzyme catalysis and Michelis Menten kinetics and linked to applications e.g. departmental relevant research. The concepts described in the module will be reinforced through labs embedded at relevant points of the semester. By taking this course students will be:  1. Introduced to biological engineering. 2. Shown that manufacturing can be achieved using living systems. 3. Introduced to microorganisms and microbiology.  4. Introduced to novel products such as biopharmaceuticals, and new environmental processes such as bioremediation. 5. Introduced to enzymatic catalysis.¿ 6. Introduced to the key process of fermentation. 7. Introduced to synthetic biology and metabolic engineering.

Reading List