In Instrumentation and Measurement for Biological Systems, students construct a microscope and use it for experiments using mammalian and yeast cells.
PHOTO: KEN RICHARDSON
TITLE
20.309 Instrumentation and Measurement for Biological Systems
INSTRUCTORS
Maxine Jonas PhD ’07, Steven Wasserman ’88
(Spring 2024)
FROM THE CATALOG
Quantitative measurement underpins many significant advancements in biological science and engineering, highlighting the central role of cutting-edge measurement techniques. In the context of measurement, 20.309 explores the intricate relationship between measuring, manipulating, and modeling biological systems. Lectures cover the application of engineering techniques such as statistics, signal processing, system identification, and control theory to biological systems. Lab sessions focus on optical methods and electronics. Fundamental topics include measurement error and the limits of precision and accuracy.
CLASS STRUCTURE
“People call it ‘the microscope class,’” says Jenna Houle ’25, “but now that I’ve taken it, I can see that there’s so much more to it. I hadn’t learned microscopy formally before this, and it’s great to have it as a tool in my toolkit now.”
Houle, a double major in biological engineering and materials science and engineering who conducts research at MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, is referring to 20.309 Instrumentation and Measurement for Biological Systems, a required class for all biological engineering majors. In it, students construct a microscope and use it for experiments using mammalian and yeast cells, while also expanding their interdisciplinary engineering vocabulary through coding, modeling, and circuitry.
The class is a cornerstone of the undergraduate biological engineering program that was established at MIT in 2005. Senior Lecturer Maxine Jonas PhD ’07 has been teaching the class since 2013, when she returned to MIT after working in the pharmaceutical and biotech industry.
“It’s a very special class,” Jonas says, noting its hands-on nature and how different facets of engineering and physics come together to form the curriculum. “Students are empowered to tell the whole story, from the design of their experiment to the implementation to the data analysis. They develop a practice of incremental improvement that engineers use, again and again, to design, build, test, and refine.”
Students construct their microscopes using a kit, so they have time to conduct experiments. “We build microscopes with specialized applications that are used by people in real research labs, so students become familiar with the suppliers and what they may purchase for their own labs in the future,” says Jonas.
Photo: Ken Richardson
An evolving lens
One strength of the class comes from its ability to shift with cutting-edge research and pull from the knowledge base of the entire MIT community. When microfluidics research became popular in the Department of Biological Engineering, Jonas and her fellow instructors took note. “What we invented and developed in the class, in partnership with some professors whose research is based on microfluidics, was a new system where the students expose yeast cells to varying salt concentrations,” she explains. “We always want to bring it back to modeling biology and understanding how the biological system responds.”
While technologies evolve over the years—students now use 3-D printers and laser cutters for some projects—microscopy is a constant. “Compared to a lot of other investigative methods, microscopy is remarkably intuitive,” says Isaac Lock ’25, who is currently at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research through the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program and has a double major in biological engineering and philosophy.
“I think the most interesting intersection between my majors is in the realm of bioethics, which is a natural combination of any sort of biological science and a philosophy,” says Lock. “But there’s also the philosophy of knowledge: How do we even know things? That relates directly to observation, which came up a lot in this class. How do you actually know that what you’re seeing is real and isn’t just noise, or some aberration of the signal?”
“Even though forms of microscopy have been around for about 400 years—and we teach students a little bit of the history—it’s still crucial to the advancement of biology and biological engineering,” says Jonas. “There’s still so much that is observed one protein or one gene at a time.”
Popping the “molecular scale bubble”
It’s the interdisciplinary nature of the class, says Houle, that makes “the microscope class” almost a misnomer. For example, the hands-on nature of the syllabus is a welcome change of pace for most biological engineering students. “Everything I do in most of my research is moving one clear liquid to a tube of another clear liquid. Look what I made, and that was months of work!” laughs Houle. “This class gets us out of our molecular-scale bubble. You build something with your hands that you can see at the end.”
Isabella Gandara ’25 could see the parallels for gene expression in her research. “I want to do epigenetics research as it relates to public health and see how our genome is affected by different environmental exposures,” she says. “I was initially worried about having to relearn the physics and differential equations needed for the class, but it wasn’t about relearning—it was about developing an intuition for the concepts and putting them into action. We were all really inspired and encouraged by the amazing teaching staff to think about how we can apply these concepts to our own work, and our lives in general.”
After working in industry, Jonas strives to put practical components into the class that students will recognize in their future professional lives. It was her experience teaching clients to use large robotic instruments, as well as her teaching assistant days as a graduate student at MIT, that drew her back to the Institute as an instructor. “We want to teach students the fundamentals so that when they encounter a complex microscope, they understand how it works. Because once you know the basics, you can just translate this to more complex systems,” she says. “I had a good memory of MIT. I like how people can be very original, very witty, very weird. I feel that at MIT, people give their best and want to really do the best they can for their job, for their team. It pushes you to also give your best and be there for others.”
It was the practical components, as well as the interdisciplinary focus, that Lock found most interesting. “This class showed me why interdisciplinary thinking is really, really important. We introduced concepts from across disciplines that I never would’ve imagined using,” he says. “Applying these radically different fields to a biological system proved to be incredibly useful.”