Teaching DNA Design in a Community Lab

As hybrid learning expands access to education, a persistent challenge remains: while programming itself may be available to all, tailoring content and review sessions across time zones is not.

In 2015, BioClub Tokyo, a community lab situated within FabCafe, created the Asia & Oceania study group to support students taking How to Grow (Almost) Anything, a biology based spinoff of How to Make (Almost) Anything (HTGAA) and FabAcademy. With the core of the programming being held in synchronous with Eastern time zones (UTC-5), BioClub stepped in to serve willing participants who wanted to participate in East Asian time zones and in 2025, this offering was formalized into the HTGAA node system.  

Although this course was originally created MIT/Harvard undergraduates, its structured as a high-level introduction to Synthetic Biology, and has been restructured to invite global students to join the course for free. This level of accessibility led to How to Grow (Almost) Anything offering an open source curriculum that is unmatched in the field of synthetic biology. 

Although Georg Tremmel has been leading BioClub for the last decade, he has mentioned his inspiration in offering this course has been through his own journey with HTGAA.

“Synthetic Biology is going to affect each and everyone of us – and everyone should be in a position to learn and inform themselves from the experts in the fields. HTGAA is doing exactly that: providing free access to cutting-edge SynBio tools, methods and ideas. And that’s also the vision of BioClub: being a space and community where these ideas can happen.”

Georg Tremmel, Community Director and Founder of BioClub

The coursework is structured around practice based learning. Immediately, students are introduced to the concept of editing DNA, eventually gaining experience with liquid handling automation through an Opentrons lab before diving into a two-part sequence on protein design. The course then covers genetic circuits across two weeks, first addressing assembly technologies like Gibson Assembly, then exploring neuromorphic circuits. Following spring break, the curriculum shifts to cell-free systems, advanced imaging and measurement techniques including mass spectrometry, and bioproduction with cloud labs. Later weeks tackle genome building, biodesign and engineered living materials, frugal science, and bio fabrication, with teaching assistants dedicated to assisting with the students final projects. 

“That’s where David Kong from the MIT Media Lab’s Community Bio Initiative came in. He was himself a student at MIT and saw the How to Make (Almost) Anything course and saw an opportunity to open up HTGAA (How to Grow [Almost] Anything) to a global audience.” 

Georg Tremmel, Community Director and Founder of BioClub

“Participating in How to Grow [Almost] Anything in 2021 has helped me to contextualize all of the wet lab experience I had gained from community workshops and provided me with a foundation where I was given enough confidence to collaborate with scientists to develop bio-based solutions in competitions. In 2021 I helped to lead a project submitted to the Google x Biodesign Sprint, a competition developed by the Biodesign Challenge, and through my experience in HTGAA we won second place!”

Ananda Gabo, Lab Manager of BioClub
Former How to Grow (Almost) Anything (2021) Global Cohort

Ananda is currently the lab manager at BioClub Tokyo, and has served as a global teaching assistant for HTGAA in 2022 and is assisting BioClub Tokyo’s node for HTGAA this year. In 2022, she was a co-author for How to grow (almost) anything: a hybrid distance learning model for global laboratory-based synthetic biology education published in Nature Biotechnology. 

Although the deadline for enrollment has already passed, HTGAA at BioClub is scheduled to be offered every year. Stay tuned to see what exciting projects the BioClub Tokyo node features in the coming weeks – and in the meantime check out our talks and lab workshops.