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like to do now is to introduce to you our Christie for president of Alpha Phi
thank you just first how many of you are freshmen raise your hands I think that
those who aren't today can be a bonus lecture but then and so forth we really
do want to focus this freshmen as I start to look at at their mighty
educational careers so it's a pleasure to do this I will introduce you to the
world of bioengineering as a whole as we see it at MIT to the different facets
will delve into a little bit about biological engineering say as a
discipline within the world of bioengineering overall and I hope set
the stage for most of the rest of the electorate ok well let me begin by just
talking about engineering is it all about bioengineering it's nice to have a
concept for what engineering is and for those of you who are freshmen chances
are very few of you took a course in engineering and high civil engineering
course in high school I really don't exist do they come hear anything about
majoring in engineering guy really know what it is so let me let me start there
this is one way of looking at it engineering comprises two aspects there's
a science aspect of it engineers are scientists they learn about
the world around us the second aspect is technology
engineers are technologists they make things that haven't existed before
sciences studying the things that exist technology is making things that don't exist
engineers actually do both pieces the their formal words might be analysis analysis
has to do with the science gonna study systems of interest
usually complicated and this is Lee many many com- ponents 2000 hierarchical
means there's details and they come together to create something in a
creative way and then they're put together to create something yet now all
turns into one operating system in other words synthesis and that's building and
that's making technologies using the many many components put together and
complicated ways so the science is kind of the analysis part and the technology
is kind of the synthesis park right in engineering though the 10 hottest
distinguish from science scientists can also create new technologies and
scientists certainly study how the world works one of the crucial aspect as an
engineer's emphasis design emphasize design both in the study and the
building now only wanna see what is all there and how it works together
wanna say there's design principles that help us understand the relationship
between how they put together and how the system as a whole operates the
technology you can think about designing it from putting pieces together in order
to accomplish something it's really gonna be trial and error and that's not
a very effective way technologies so this is something that really is an
important facet of Engineering and that is designed think about how things get
put together in order to accomplish some kind of a desire task now within
engineering each of the engineering disciplines you can think of
focus on a particular science base for the components that it wants to study
and build things from the mechanisms that wants to study and built things
from you can't know all the sites in the world so if you get a major some kind of
an engineering usually some aspect of science that's that's going to be our
focus so for instance civil engineering mechanical engineering electrical
engineering tend to focus on particular branches of that's the signs they
studied the most all enjoy our study mathematics that's that's clear that if
you're in civil engineering mechanical engineering electrical engineering you
really go in depth on a lot of the physics of putting together our physical
compliments of the mechanisms are gonna be the physics of how these things in
Iraq quantum physics physics physics people who major in chemical engineering
or nuclear engineering and materials science and engineering and math they
learn some physics but then they tend to focus on some branches of chemistry
organic chemistry physical chemistry maybe inorganic chemistry that's the
kind of sides will study most because those are the study help chemical
companies work together and help chemical mechanisms operate you notice I
haven't written biology may come later but if you look at the additional
engineering disappointed about around the bend based on some branches of
physics or some branches of chemistry my heart but in all of these there's a very
interesting paradigm you can use different words for it but here's one
set of words that's easy enough to remember measure model manipulate make
measure things quantify what's there and works need to model you need to describe
it in mathematical terms because it's so complicated your intuition can't do it
mathematical models to represent how the system operates in ways that your
intuition just can't grasp manipulate you need to go in and change
things change one component change its properties in order to make the
system behave differently and then if you're good at all that you know can measure
what's there and know how it works together to make changes then you can
actually make something useful so that's that's sort of progression requires
design principles design parameters application models to make something
you really need to construct it for the kind of operation you want to have
to study the overall system is behaving based on competence so that's what
these engineers do based on physics and that's what these engineers do based on
chemistry that's a little bit of a feel for engineering ok well now less
engineering to the world of biology and medicine hear words like I mentioned
earring biomedical engineering medical engineering biological engineering how
can we make sense of that well here's one way to look at it first let's
start with these traditional engineering that everybody's familiar with
that are based on mathematics and some branches of physics and chemistry depending
on the discipline chemical engineering electrical engineering mechanical
engineering materials science and engineering ok if you take any one of
these disciplines and apply them to problems that arise from healthcare clinical
hospital device or diagnostic industries you can call yourself a biomedical
engineer taking the disciplinary engineering based on chemistry
or physics you're applying it to a medical problem that's biomedical engineering
discipline you would major in saudi mighty we have a minor in biomedical
engineering we should major in any one of these things take some courses
that have to do with biology and medicine and that's not an application filled
that applies its problems now we also added biology with this is + medicine
and this is + biology see if you take any one of these traditional disciplines
and teach also its biology that's essentially the field of biotechnology
thinking about engineering biology and that can be applied to health
care problems in the pharmaceutical industry say the device industry
is also applicable to many other kinds of industry new kinds of materials
manufacturing I worker defense things like that so chemical engineer at like
10 material territorial Science Engineer had by themselves to biomedical engineering
they can apply the same for biotechnology so that's part of your choices
you can major in course or two or three and one and so forth
choice of problems that you saw you can also be part of the world of biomedical
engineering at all of this lump together is what we would call bioengineering I'm
hearing is just a very broad umbrella covers what any of these diverse
disciplines might do that bring engineering together with sides of
biology or the profession of medicine now in addition the thing we've created
here at MIT is another engineering discipline that's very analogous to this
you might think it has a sister of course had a course a course to our
course three but now the scientific basis on it learns math class 11 physics
and chemistry but now its basic sciences biology how partisan mechanisms by which
biology works kinetics biochemistry molecular biology cell biology says this
is the science for Biological these people can now get a major and a couple
weeks away from we hope you approve discourse 20 and you can use this major
to solve medical problems that have to do with health care you can use this
major to solve biotechnology problem in other industries so it becomes a sister
discipline alongside her electrical or mechanical and
materials or civil it's just based on a different science all of these majors
whether it's biological engineering or any of these part of the whole
world of bioengineering and biomedical engineering work about this is
a very important picture to keep it might otherwise these names just gotta go
over the place I what's the difference they're all the same it's not true
really are specific differences in just a matter of choice so let's look a
little history to figure out how we got here I'm hearing biomedical engineer has
actually been around for about more than 50 years back in the middle part of the
20th century people were creating artificial kidneys and artificial hearts
things like that they were trained it was like 20 years or chemical engineers
mechanical engineers chemistry and physics but they just applied it to the
problem of replacing heart kidney function so the careers they tended to
work in the medical device field diagnostics imaging prosthetics those
artificial limb say implants are artificial heart extracorporeal outside
the body artificial kidney so a lot of these folks working those industries or
something in the pharmaceutical industry we actually made a drug he worked in
manufacturing or processing delivery and these engineers didn't really need to be
trained in the science of biology per say they don't really need genetics
biochemistry and molecular biology cell biology they could take engineering they
learn based on physics and chemistry and these kinds of problems very usefully
and most of the majors around the country to go to other universities you
had a choice of other universes if they have a biomedical engineering major
this is really what is focused on and you have that choice here you can major
in one of the other engineering disciplines and still apply yourself to
medical problems are just some examples and it's sort of got
them in alphabetical order of departments it might be associated with a
presence there I asked her department there's interests in space flight physiology
what happens when you take humans out into low crap what changes about
their physiology at something that an aerospace major interested in biomedical
engineering I find a very attractive research area to be a great Richard
major a narrow Astro and looking to spaceflight physiology ensuring file processing
chemical engineers are very well trained in process engineering how to
make things out of chemical products you learn how to build bioreactors reactors
that have cells making some useful therapeutic protein that's a very exciting
thing to be in electrical engineering we've got a couple examples here
imaging how to use different types of mortalities were you send different
types of electromagnetic waves into tissue and have them restored it in
different ways by the different companies the tissue so they actually
can see through tissue electrical engineer can be very good at the
sort of imaging working alot about electromagnetic physics in signal processing
and so forth in order to figure out how different waves pass through
tissue and end up depicting different portions of the tissue tumors and
so forth and biomedical engineering this might be something that they would do
guided surgery I sort of have this under computer science is that he can take
those images from the computer and then say well where should I cut in order to
miss arteries and veins in the most effective thing with five gotta do a
surgery around somebody's me in computer science and robotic algorithms and apply
them to the sword environmental remediation this might be civil
engineering environmental engineering course one would be very interested
in the microbes in the outside world and how they consume toxic chemicals
might be able to clean it up so that's that's an interesting application
of a civil environmental engineering to bioengineering material science
you might be interested in drug delivery somebody makes the drug how do you
actually get into the body in the right places and released at the right rates
in the right amounts targeted to the brain
targeted to the liver have to create the right kinds of roles capitulate drugs
and let him to fuse out to the right place at the right time at the right pH
and so forth material scientists might be very good about
troll drug delivery problems anymore
ok artificial heart mechanical engineers would learn all the things you need to
know to build the pumps and study the fluid flow of the fluid mechanics of the
blood and how it doesn't get sheer to the blood cells get damaged
have you the right to the right pressures the right flow rates the right
solutions to study that sort of fluid physics fluid mechanics major mechanical
engineering and very important contributions with artificial hearts or
hip implants need to replace a damaged and injured hip
chemical engineers might be very well trained to be able to study the forces
that need to be withstood and how to create the right structures of some kind
of material to share those loads and connect things in the right ways it can
be very good at things like hip implants to get the message has all sorts
of things we can major in one of these disciplines and connect that discipline
to be application world of biology application world of medicine but
still trained in that discipline and these are the things that you would major
in course one or two or three or six or ten say and then do the biomedical
engineering minor connect that major to the right elective courses ok
and that's been the state of the world for about the last 50 years there's
been all those majors and as I said if you go to some other universities
and major in biomedical engineering you really get trained to do one
of those things specialize in electrical or mechanical or
chemical controlled release or implants so far and you notice I haven't said
anything about biology those folks didn't really need to be educated in genetics
biochemistry molecular biology cell biology to solve those problems that's
because biology is it used to be was not a science that engineers could address
very well because in order for engineers to really analyze study quantitatively
develop models and to build technologies after the parts that's
a lot of requirements on the science that really biology didn't satisfy
the actual mechanisms a function with understood yes you can see that moving
your arm required a certain force and would wear certain load you really didn't
know what was going on down in the proteins and cells and tissues of the
muscles and bones but still you could design maybe an artificial implant don't
really know the molecular components so how in the world could be actually
manipulate the system even know what the molecules were that it really underlying
this couldn't really do the chemistry on the biological molecule is very
hard to quantify parts of the mechanisms how could you get quantitative
measurements for them develop models so there's good reason why
there never really was a biological engineering until very recently
while he wasn't the science that was really suited engineering analysis and
so therefore the world of biomedical engineering mailing it all these
application problems that I just talked about necessarily require biology but
that's good news for you folks is biology has changed its now a science
that engineers and in fact that two very well very different when I was your age
when I was your age and a freshman in college biology was just starting to be
on the verge quantitative mechanistic component relatable desirable available sites when i
sat in your chair wasn't that way to revolutions happened one was the molecular
evolution molecular biology at one point I'm that was a revolution didn't
exist the identification of the actual components
involved so we just look at bone you may think well it's just this mechanical
material issue well no wonder to me that is cells that build-up polymers
and degrade them and they have little motors that move around and machinery
that pulls on the tissues and batteries inside that create the molecules
integrate them and that's all governed by specific networks and machine
that will talk about a minute and molecular biology allowed all these pieces
these compliments underneath just this big microscopic structure to now start
to be identified only when you can identify the actual like the com- ponents
you really start to do engineering on it really decide what they
were and then change them genetically
the second revolution was the genomic revolution and that was really important
because even the molecular files existed you can identify these components and
study their properties and manipulate them very painstaking kinda wanted to
time and it might take a decade to really learn about one particular gene
or one particular proti nice thing about the genomic revolution is just
accelerated this immensely you can now learn about the parts in a very
comprehensive way hundreds at a time thousands of the time the technologies that
exists now to study these now allow us to get many many more com- ponents understood
identified measured and so forth so the parts manipulate them do this
actually in a very fast way so I'll just at the point where getting the parts
of manipulating them is now relatively easy now the hard part is how do
they work now that you know what the compliments our how do they work well interestingly
enough they work as machines if you look at a picture of a cell
here migrating across the surface he wanna know how to make that sell migrated
faster colonized by material or or or slower to prevent tumor from metastasizing
you have to look inside the cell or how the molecular compounds work
together as a machine to transmit forces to the environment pull on the environment
pull the rest of the cell along actin cytoskeleton and also to proteins
that link the actin cytoskeleton to receptors across the cell
membrane they bind to proteins the extracellular matrix and these are work as
an exquisite many many many many many molecule machine decide what forced to generate
and where and how strong just knowing that all these parts exist and their
properties is crucial but then you have to put them all together to study them
as a machine other aspects these machines are not autonomous
they're not just sort of sitting there working constantly at the same
rates in the same powers they're regulated so those machines might be tuned
to generate more force or less force for set one side of the cell instead
of the other who regulates well as a whole other sets of molecules that actually
work as information processing circuits and you control them as signal transduction
cascades where signals coming from the environment and they set off
enzymatic reactions that change what genes are expressed in the forces that which
cytoskeleton pools and the rates at which enzymes perform metabolic reactions
of people draw them then as schematically a circuit where you would take
all the molecules that might be this kind of biological cartoon just draw
them here and some kind of archaic electrical circuit because the cells are machines
that carry out function of circuits that govern all those machines work
is a very appealing metaphors and this is engineering language all the same
biology now that we have the compliment so we can do something with them
he needs to be studied the way engineers look at things from the machine
circuits systems and so forth so biology is now very different biology of thirty
years ago didn't allow biological engineering biology now so the bioengineering
world that's existed for fifty years that has come on jerry electrical
engineering mechanical MaterialScience aimed at medical problems
not really studying biology in-depth that's been around fifty years because
it didn't need biology still exists now that biology can be accessed by
engineers this new thing shows up beside now there is a biological engineering
that you can study genetics biochemistry molecular biology cell biology
of the basic science because now I algae can be analyzed in the
can be synthesized and actually it benefits from this engineering approach because
these machines and circuits are complex to the com- ponents can now be identified
mechanisms can now be studied you cannot quantify them genetic engineering
means you can very easily manipulate these protein that has a critical
function you can you take it expressed higher levels are lower levels are
different places in the cellar having interact with different molecules with
different affinities you cannot change any come on it you want the hard part
is predicting what's going to happen when do so this is where engineers
now so I added them to the traditional engineering disciplines that can
be applied to solving medical problems there is this new discipline now
that I mightiest created that's called biological engineering because it's
rooted in biology chemistry is rooted in let's runs but that's a branch of
physics so I just call everything physical engineering that's why we have a
different branches but there's an analogy 200 years ago electrical engineering
was invented here may not know that there was no such thing as electrical
engineering until the 18 nineties MIT invented it
know what all these advances in physics and we got a train engineers to study at
federal buildings on it might take great electrical engineering in the nineteen
thirties until then there was no such thing as chemical engineering MIT
invented it said you know what there's all these advances in science and
chemistry early part of the 20th century chemistry became mechanistic
quantifiable in my case would you know what we ought to train people think like
engineers to study at buildings on it very well now we're in roughly 2,000
plus an almighty is doing the same thing with with with you know what this
revolution in biology now mechanistic quantifiable and assignable and
manipulate double let's create this take place that frequently
every few decades as a new kind of engineering so it's got both technology
facets and science facets biological engineers want to create new technologies
new things that are built from biological compliments and there's also
the signs facet we want to analyze and understand better the way biological systems
work as these machines and circuits are so understanding building both
are facets so it looks just like all the other engineering science technology
this analysis is complicated many companies systems synthesis is building
new things based on these systems measure model manipulated make only
differences instead of doing these on the basis of physical components and inorganic
ur organic chemistry company you're doing it on genes proteins and cells
that's the science of which you analyze and built I let me just give you a
few examples of the sorts of things that are being done in the lab some of the
biological engineering faculty that will give you a flavour of what happens when
you think like an engineer analysis of complicated things and quantitative integrative
design ways but you're doing it on the substrate of mechanisms of biology
so one aspect is either new methods to really manipulate biological systems
may be for studying them better angle ward has a new kind of genetic constructs
the cheese made I won't go into detail but in the genes of a cell think
about how do you get mutations may get bombarded by radiation toxic chemicals
chemicals laboratory response chemicals can interact with the DNA in your
chromosomes and causal mutations in the chromosomes are just change the
bases in the in the DNA and that changes the way the jeans turned into proteins
and commuted the self how can you watch that happen how could you actually see
that happen she has created a way to do it by taking a gene that will make a
protein thats yellow dresses yellow but only when there's been a damaged plant
in that particular piece of the DNA so might a mouse might normally be whatever
color is white or brown every one of its cells expressing this yellow protein
mouse would agree that would help you much what you really want to be able to
see the green or yellow sell only when there's been a damaged mutation there
that might lead to cancer so she's created that and what you can see here
this is actually the pancreas of a mouse and mouse is just about all white or
brown every now and then the pancreas let's say you can see one seller to
cells that now light up hello there chromosomes have been damaged in this place
I some radiation or chemical or some kind of an event so she's created a new
way to manipulate biology and inside a living animal to study this mutation about
750 elated a system by biological components in order to study them better
another type of biological measurement method this is a precious come analysis
and you might want to be able to have better ways of studying how DNA
interacts with RNA or how proteins interact with DNA or how proteins
interact with each other but really want to measure them and sells very low
levels and without having to add extra labels like fluorescence of
radioactivity he's created this new device where you can put one kind of
molecule on these tiny little cantilever that are only a few hundred microns long
and very very thin and then if he takes some sample from blood or tissues or cells
they buying to these molecules are very selective way it'll been scheduled later
crossed that wash little tiny bends and measure tens or hundreds or thousands
of these things simultaneously with a new measurement method aimed at understanding
the molecular components inside cells you may create entirely new systems
in which to study biology professor Linda Griffiths all of these are
biologically festers is very interested in studying the onset of human
disease and it's really hard to study human patients and say you know what
I want to treat you give you this thing I wanna see if you get this disease
not very good with animals that animal physiology isn't the same as human
physiology so how can you actually study human physiology and the answer to these
really do it in humans and animals in the world of tissue engineering which she's
really discovered is you can create human tissues outside the body so here
she has this tiny silicon chip you can see how small it is relative to a penny
and in this is drilled all sorts of holes and then these holes essentially
she can build with the right combinations of cell biology and biochemistry
and biophysics you could recreate liver tissue capillary liver cells
all branching and you could have led like fluid flow through it and the cells
live and you can study this will be your things like that so she's created
human tissue liver tissue outside the body so she can now study the
outset of human liver diseases cancers viral infections in ways that you
could do this is biological engineering has created a new biological assay
system of biological templates base materials Angela Beltre wants to create
it's very important to have small micro electronic circuits and say or what
I like this place what they require us to get inorganic compounds pattern in it
in a very very careful and very reliable way down at the nanometer scale so
the right crystal structures form and so forth right now that's done with very expensive
and very toxic processes toxic chemicals high pressures things like that
you replace this all the biological processes that require the toxic chemicals
in the high pressures temperatures and the environmental waste and
so she's taken viruses that are tiny there's a nanometer scale and engineered them
genetically-altered them so that I their tips on their sides they express cific
peptide sequences that can bind to the particular inorganic materials crystals
that she's interested and the viruses organize them into wires she's made
conducting lawyers she's made batteries and she can do this like in the
lab on this bench right here high-temperature and high-pressure toxic chemicals
viruses will do it if she just hates them correctly so you kind of materials
basic biology professor at sarah who's your instructor for this course
I might think this is new biology based devices I talked about biological machines
molecules come together and they can generate forces very clever ways
so he's studying how for instance in some organisms the horseshoe crab as something
called an actress ailment which have a coiled up cytoskeletal structure
and under the right conditions it gets released and very quickly generates
a very large force that can push or penetrator so forth but he's treading
the structure of this molecule how it's regulated how it moves
confirmation that stores energy that can be triggered to that change its
confirmation and structuring generator force this now can create new kinds of
force generating devices based on biology reading home organisms that have
you heard of this field of synthetic biology really what that is as genetic
engineering with a engineering design perspective rather than just trial and
error happens if i take this gene its ok im gonna have a model for gene
regulation and expression of proteins one of these proteins gonna do it a
network for metabolism or protein production or things like that
models for this and i must say exactly what I have to do that the gene sequence
in order to get the outcome that I want that's genetic engineering real
engineering called synthetic biology so und pastor Andy
and biological engineering has taken a particular virus the bacteriophage
G-seven that has a very complex genomes that people understand parts
of it but not all of it and he's essentially refactoring it
reengineering it looks paltry factoring cuz it's like he's doing a computer
algorithm and he's intentionally changing the the genome of a spy base
sequence fundamental modeling understanding to say what proteins gonna
be expressed at what levels and in what order and then study the various new
organisms that is made or how they can grow under different conditions create
new work processes and properties ok so his last examples I gave you came from
over here this is what you can do if you are educated to think like an engineer
and the analysis and so the system complicated many components quantitative
modeling design which is done
genetics biochemistry molecular biology cell about that now
rates this discipline that's a long side of all these others that are strongly
based in chemistry and physics and the application areas yes