Urban microbiomes and design across biological scales!

Workshop Dates: August 26-30, 2019

Faculty: TBA

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Description:

In the era of computational genomics, a great deal of progress has been made in determining the relationships between genetic information and the development of multicellular organisms: plants, animals, humans. But what’s become most clear from this research is that all these organisms owe meaningful aspects of their development and phenotype to interactions with the microorganisms — bacteria or fungi — with which they live in symbiosis.

Those microbes are an integral part of, and are affected by, our environment. As such, the individual microbiome — whether it lives on the skin, gut, mouth or elsewhere — manifests the continuum between organism and environment. It is a powerful tool for studying the impact of the environment on humans, and ultimately a vector with which to intervene through engineered landscapes.

Within architecture the primary recognition of microbes has been in their role as pathogens. Building materials are treated to diminish anything microbial, and like antibiotics these methods are non-selective; they might kill the pathogens, but they also kill microbes that are beneficial to human survival and well-being. Most of the time, however, the vast microbial kingdom is simply neglected. It’s not a part of the plan.

Metagenomics is the field of research which investigates the microbial component of our environment. It is a rapidly growing field, enabled by the recent decrease in cost and increase in throughput of DNA sequencing technology. We can now easily measure the microbial component of our environment and have the opportunity to incorporate this new microbial metric into the design of our built environments and products.

In this class we will cover a basic understanding of the state of current research in environmental microbiomes. Students will get hands-on experience in which they will learn the computational methods to analyze genomic data. We will design novel interfaces to interact with this invisible component of our environment, perhaps in the form of sampling instruments, bioreactors or bio receptive substrates that propose new symbiotic relationships with the microbial environment.

Learning expectations:

By the completion of this course, students will be able to:

• Understand of the state of current research in environmental microbiomes


• Introduce speculative thinking as well as rigorous experimental design to their practice


• Materialize an interface bridging scales from the macroscopic to the microscopic


• Develop critical thinking skills to assess the scientific feasibility, human impact, sustainability and risk of their biotechnological interventions

Interested in Design, Science and everything in between. No specific skills required. Whether you have previous knowledge or experience with biology or not, we encourage you to participate. You may familiarize yourself with the standard curriculum of a college-level introduction to cell and microbiology, but this is not a requirement.