Gordon Richard, Melvin Cameron A
Department of Radiology, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada.
Int J Dev Biol. 2003;47(2-3):183-7.
Our desire to educate engineers to be able to understand the component processes of embryogenesis, is driven by the notion that only when principles borrowed from mathematics, fluid mechanics, materials science, etc. are applied to classical problems in developmental biology, will sufficient comprehension be achieved to permit successful understanding and therapeutic manipulation of embryos. As it now stands, biologists seldom possess either skills or interest in those areas of endeavor. Thus, we have determined that it is easier to educate engineers in the principles of developmental biology than to help biologists deal with the complexities of engineering. We describe a graduate course that has been taken, between 1999 and 2002, by 17 engineering students. Our goal is to prepare them to reverse engineer the embryo, i.e., to look at it as an object or process whose construction, albeit self-construction, might be explicable in terms of engineering principles applied at molecular, cellular and whole embryo levels.
我们希望培养出能够理解胚胎发育组成过程的工程师，这种愿望源于这样一种观念：只有当从数学、流体力学、材料科学等领域借鉴的原理应用于发育生物学的经典问题时，才能实现足够的理解，从而成功地理解和治疗性操纵胚胎。目前的情况是，生物学家很少具备这些领域的技能或兴趣。因此，我们确定，对工程师进行发育生物学原理的教育比对生物学家进行工程复杂性教育更容易。我们描述了一门在1999年至2002年期间由17名工程专业学生修读的研究生课程。我们的目标是让他们对胚胎进行逆向工程，也就是说，将胚胎视为一个物体或过程，其构建过程，尽管是自我构建，但或许可以根据在分子、细胞和整个胚胎层面应用的工程原理来解释。
