Engineering & biological systems

The objective of this course is to study potential interactions between biology and engineering. It is divided into 3 parts as follows: The first part is dedicated to elementary biology to answer the following questions: what is a cell? What are the different types of cells? What biological mechanisms take place in living systems? The second part is an introduction to bio-informatics. We will for instance show how the study of DNA sequences combined with a simple evolution model can lead to the retrieval of the evolution tree of a given set of species, or how similarities between two proteins can lead to the same functionality. Finally, the course will illustrate interactions between biology (living systems) and engineering:

• biotechnology: this part will focus on how to use living systems for industrial production or environmental issues;
• biomimetics: this part of the course will focus on bio-inspired technologies in aeronautics. Several examples of innovative concepts mimicking nature will be presented and put in the perspective of evolution, and optimization of the adaptation to the environment.