Drafted Syllabus for Plant SynBio Course 2025 by SynBio4ALL Africa

Detailed Google Docs here 

Course Logistics

Planned time

• Time: 4:30pm UTC on Wednesdays:

• Slides and recordings will be posted within two days of lecture finishing under

• Homeworks will be in a quiz formatted Google Form

Final Group project

• During the course, students and instructors will work together to identify native African plant candidates for whole-genome sequencing project. We will identify up to 5 candidates for materials securing tasks and move forward with 1-2 organisms of interest conducted by our volunteers in Africa. 

Course Schedule and Links

We will focus on plant systems engineering! This includes engineering of plants themselves and the systems surrounding them, such as plants microbiome. We will also explore the biodiversity of plants in Africa and conduct genomics research as a group project on whole-genome sequencing and assembly. 

Note that all lectures will be recorded and posted on Youtube. The recording will be immediately available for students (unlisted) and will be made available publicly after the end of the course.

***The dates of lecture below are not finalized but should be within May - August 2025.

Week 0 (May 28, 2025): [Optional] Course Orientation and Course Objectives

This orientation week is optional but highly encouraged for those who are new to the SynBio4ALL initiative. We will discuss the mission of SynBio4ALL Africa and our objective of this course and have an open discussion platform to hear from the community. We will touch on the Plant SynBio course briefly but will dedicate most of our time for the general aspects of our community.

• Previous courses: https://synbio4all.wixsite.com/synbio4all/education 

Week 1 (Jun 4, 2025): Introduction to Plant and Synthetic Biology

This week will describe an overview of synthetic biology and its role in plant science. We will review our previous materials on Beginner’s and Microbial SynBio courses in the context of Plant. Some key tools and technologies together with a lens of Plant Biology. We will also dedicate a portion of our class to discuss African Plants Biodiversity and their significance. —Some of these topics will be introduced in brief: CRISPR, Modular Cloning Assembly, Plant Transformation, etc.

Week 2 (Jun 11, 2025): Plant Genome Architecture

In this lecture, we will focus on the genome architecture of plants, which is distinct from that of microbes and animals. We explore the challenges surrounding whole genome sequencing of different plants in addition to studying their structure and review recent technologies in this area. Here, we will use the baobab tree (Adansonia spp.) as a reference organism.

Week 3 (Jun 18, 2025): Tools and Techniques for Plant Genome Editing

This lecture will cover recent tools and techniques for engineering plants. We will use CRISPR technology in plants for starters and listed challenges involving plant genome editing.

Week 4 (Jun 25, 2025): Plant Metabolic Engineering

Given that plants serve as sources of macronutrients and micronutrients for the living organisms on earth, we will discuss case studies on plant metabolic engineering as a potential guide. We will use Artemisinin production from Artemisia annua as a placeholder.

Week 5 (Jul 2, 2025): Plants Microbiome and Engineering Strategies

In soil or even parts of plants, there are microorganisms residing within. We will explore the impact of microbiome in plant ecosystems especially in the context of nitrogen fixation, disease resistance, and leveraging secondary metabolites biosynthesis.

Week 6 (Jul 9, 2025): Group Final Project — Exploring African biodiversity with an open-source educational program in Plant Synthetic Biology

In this week, we will focus on the group final project details particularly on plant biodiversity, the impact from studying biodiversity, and the challenges surrounding plant whole genome sequencing.

The goal of this lecture is to identify candidates of under-researched African native plants for the whole-genome sequencing.

• Submit 3 candidates for plant whole-genome sequencing

Week 7 (Jul 16, 2025): Computational Approaches for Plant Synthetic Biology

In this course, we will focus on computational workflow in plant synthetic biology. We will explore plant genome assembly and annotation with some example tools. Furthermore, we will dive deeper into biodiversity studies using bioinformatic approaches.

Week 8 (Jul 23, 2025): Notable Applications of Plants Synthetic Biology: Food and Medicine

In this lecture, we will discuss existing and potential applications of plant engineering to combat food security and enhance drug discovery.

Week 9 (Jul 30, 2025): Notable Applications of Plants Synthetic Biology: Sustainability focus

In this lecture, we will discuss existing and potential applications of plant engineering to mitigate climate change issues and increase sustainable development globally.

Week 10 (Aug 6, 2025): Biosafety, Ethical Considerations, and Global Partnerships

We will discuss regulatory frameworks for synthetic biology in plants. We will emphasize the biosafety guidelines and public perception of engineered plants. We will include aspects of global partnership and Intellectual property rights in our discussion.

• Discussion on candidates of African native plant for whole genome sequencing

Homework Review (after Week 7)

This is the additional homework for Make-Up with low-score issues in the previous homework. 

• Note that late submissions will be graded by Aug 1, 2025 and if you're concerned that you may have lower scores on any of those assignments, we encourage you to work on this Make-Up/Review Homework despite not knowing those results.

• You only need to complete this form if you scored lower than 5 points in some of the previous homework in Week 1 to Week 7. Submissions of homeworks on Week 8-10 are mandatory but passing scores are not required.

Group Final Project

Group final project will be conducted together between students and instructors/volunteers. Our goal is to identify candidates for whole-genome sequencing of interesting African native plants. We’re expecting to come up with 5-10 candidates that are interesting for biodiversity knowledge and will evaluate the likelihood of successful genome sequencing and assembly to narrow down to 1-2 organisms. Then, in September 2025, our volunteers in Africa will secure biological samples and prepare them appropriately for further DNA/genome sequencing. In October to November 2025, Our volunteer team will then conduct genome assembly and downstream analysis afterward, in December, to explore biodiversity knowledge gain and potential applications.