Life-Changing Science: The BioBuilder Podcast
Life-Changing Science: The BioBuilder Podcast
Finding Synthetic Biology: Nicolas Rojas Taborda Transformative Journey
In this episode of Life-Changing Science, we sit down with Nicolas Rojas Taborda, a senior at Revere High School. Nico's interests shifted dramatically thanks to his involvement in the BioBuilder Apprenticeship Challenge. Nico describes his discovery of synthetic biology and his team's project idea, the K Detective, an innovative at-home kit for cavity detection. This project not only sharpened his technical prowess with tools like PCR and gel electrophoresis but also positioned him to succeed in his Boston University STEM pathway internship building logic gates for CAR-T cells, and as a leader of his high school's iGEM team.
Nico shares his future aspirations in the realm of synthetic biology and education. Considering roles as a mentor or teacher with BioBuilder, he reflects on the fulfilling nature of educational roles. Moreover, he describes the Christian A. Herter Memorial Scholarship application process, sharing tips on requesting a standout letter of recommendation and defining a clear career vision. This episode wraps up with his process investigating potential college majors and his dreams to someday launch a biotech company.
Nico emphasizes the foundational impact BioBuilder has had on his journey. This episode is not just an exploration of one student's evolution but a testament to the life-changing possibilities of early scientific engagement.
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Hello and welcome to Life-Changing Science the BioBuilder podcast. My guest today is Nicholas Rojas de Borda. A Revere High School senior, he joined BioBuilder's Apprenticeship Challenge in 2023. Since then, he's entered at Boston University and is currently leading a high school iGEM team. Nico credits BioBuilder for his scientific journey so far. He's also the recipient of the Christian A Herder Memorial Scholarship, which supports students who've overcome challenges to excel academically. Let's learn more about Nico's journey and dive right into this episode.
Speaker 2:When did you first get interested in science and technology? Was it at a young age where you saw a certain tv show or you, you know, read a sci-fi novel and you're like, wow, this is awesome. Or was it maybe a specific class that you took um in school?
Speaker 3:yeah, just interested in learning more about that first yeah, um, most of my life I wasn't interested in science. I thought I'd end up being a lawyer or maybe like an English professor or something I really had like more of an affinity towards like the humanities. And when I started high school at least like my sophomore year I was enrolled in mostly like humanities classes and then after that I started becoming more interested in math and then I thought about I thought more about like the amount of work that you can do in science to like advance the world if that makes sense, and like the. I just thought it was more cool overall. And so when I started learning about synthetic biology specifically, I thought it was something like straight out of sci-fi and I really enjoyed specifically Dune. I thought Dune was really cool when I read it and I was like, wow, this is just like Dune when I learned about synthetic biology. So I think that was actually like the catalyst for me even getting the interest into science. Before that it was mostly humanities for me.
Speaker 2:When did you first hear about BioBuilder? So you know of course you're taking science classes. You know obviously very interested in science fiction. You know with Jim, of course. When did, because you also mentioned you're really interested in maths. So I'm curious where did you know some of the biology and bio builder? When did you first get interested in that side of things?
Speaker 3:Yeah, during my sophomore year is when I learned about bio builder. That's the year I also did the high school apprenticeship challenge. What happened was that my counselor sent it over to me because he thought it'd be a good opportunity, because at the time I wasn't really sure about what I wanted to do as a career. I knew I liked math and I didn't really have a particular interest in like physics versus biology or any type of science. I kind of just thought like I wasn't really picking one right now and I just decided that later. So when he sent me that and said this could be a chance for you to like maybe take a try at something and see if it sticks, so I applied and I looked at the poster, the materials, and it seemed really interesting. That makes sense.
Speaker 2:So tell us a bit about your experience in the Biobuilder Apprenticeship Challenge that your project was, on some of the skills you learned and how the experience sort of shaped you as a scientist.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so the Biobuilder High School Apprenticeship Challenge I did it with one of my friends his name was Ryan and we'd go there together to there and back, ryan and we'd go there together to there and back, and we'd also go from school to there and back. So it was I came in with him A lot of the time. It was completely new topics, things I hadn't learned about at all in the past. So that was, I think, the best part for me, because I really enjoy learning new things and I think some of the most important skills learned for me, even though it seems like something simple, was doing like c1 v1 equals c2 v2 conversions. Like just that small thing has helped me a lot in my chemistry class. It helps me a lot in my current projects and iGEM. Like overall it's been really important.
Speaker 3:The technical skills we did PCR, we learned about gel electrophoresis, we did an SDS page and we overall got a really good view at what the synthetic biology landscape is like, which I thought it was really cool at the time I had never heard of it and just seeing like all the stuff you could do with it. It was With my project. I worked with two other students. Our project was called the K Detective and what we wanted to do was create a product that could detect cavities and it'd be a cheaper product, it'd be easier to transport, to get out to people Instead of maybe going to a dentist. This could be like an at-home kit for people that may not be able to get like health care that easily or dental care. How did this?
Speaker 2:the idea because, um, having, uh, what do you call? Home testing kits for a variety of of different um, yeah, different diseases and certain things is very important, right, and it's definitely scientifically feasible. And, you know, the business model clearly works, whether it's, you know, for profit or not for profit. So how did this idea come about for these kids? Was there like brainstorming session that BioBuilder had made you do? Do you, you know, form groups and brainstorm different ideas amongst each other? I was curious about learning more about how this idea came to fruition.
Speaker 3:So when we started brainstorming, what we did was BioBuilder. The instructors had like five different general topics. Like some of them was like bio manufacturing, like energy, health topics. Like some of them was like biomanufacturing, like energy, health and like food and things like that. So what me and my two partners decided to do was we wanted to be in the other category because that was one of them, just because we really wanted to do something that was like truly like in between, like we didn't want to just be constrained to one thing, and so we went along with a, along with a lot of different ideas.
Speaker 3:At first, we had a manufacturing type of idea where we would create a product that would help with low hair porosity in your hair, and then, over time, we took a look and analyzed, like the feasibility of this, and then we transitioned to the dental idea, where we wanted a like biosensor type of thing for ph, and so what we did was, um, we started with finding our, which is just the bacteria that we wanted all our parts to go in, all our new DNA, and so we were looking for a bacteria that could survive and that we knew would survive in the mouth.
Speaker 3:So we got a bacteria called Streptococcus mycine, and we knew that one lived in the mouth, so we could easily add just new parts to it and it would be able to live there. And throughout the whole process, the bowel builder instructors were the ones giving us tips on like remember to make sure it can live there. Remember that it also has to be something that's not like crazy, like pathogenic, so that you can like have it there and yeah, you know, of course you mentioned this was some of the first time you were doing some of these lab techniques.
Speaker 2:But also, what you just mentioned right now was you know you were brainstorming ideas, you were going online and doing your research and I'm sure you're reading a lot of papers, doing like a mini literature review in a way and you know reading scientific papers is hard at any level, whether you're in high school or you've done a PhD. So I want to learn more about it. Was this sort of the first time you felt like how did you develop as a scientist as you were going through this process of coming up with the idea and learning new techniques? Did you feel like you were, you know, sort of doing like first-hand science for the for the first time, in a way?
Speaker 3:yeah, definitely.
Speaker 3:I think something that I really learned that really stuck with me is the importance of collaborating with your like fellow scientists, and just sharing criticism and being open to it as well, because there's a lot of ideas thrown out and we really changed a lot of things, like from our beginning to end product.
Speaker 3:There was a lot of collaboration throughout and I think that was probably the most important part in the end. Uh, the thing that shaped our project the best was just talking to each other and really being honest, to feedback. I think that's the most important part and the thing I learned most and overall, it really was the first like time I had I had been giving like a task like that in class. Uh, because in class I'd never been giving a task like that in class, because in class I'd never been giving a task like that to create something completely novel and do a ton of research where, as you said, I'd have to read scientific papers which, at the beginning, were completely like an alien language. I had to Google almost every single word and then, over time, I found myself understanding more of it Probably not a majority of it by the end, but I understood more of it and I'm proud of that.
Speaker 2:Yep you should be proud of that because you know we've all scientists have been through that process and it's super hard. Um, so that's that's awesome, that you could experience it like super early on, because you know I wasn't doing, like you know, pci electrophoresis until like first or second year of college, in undergrad. So that's awesome. Um, what do you think is your like favorite technique that you learned? Like, for me, I really liked some of the microscopy stuff that I did, but that was like in final year of college. What did you? What technique were you like? Wow, this, this is, this is insane, this is awesome.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think. For me it probably would be like running gels where there's like the yeah, I think I think running gels overall, just because there's there's some stuff you like little tips and tricks that you learn over time that I found over time that I found and having that really early experience of learning how to pour the gel and putting all your materials into the columns learning how to do that well was a really important skill. No for sure.
Speaker 2:I mean, I was terrible at it. It took me a while to get it Awesome. So you had this amazing personal and professional development that happened at BioBuilder. So you had this amazing experience at BioBuilder. So I had this amazing experience at BioBuilder and I know that it sort of led to a summer research program at Boston University. So I'm curious about how that came about.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so the summer research program there. It's hosted by STEM Pathways and we were given an application by Sun pathways. It was for the Bible, their students for the high school apprenticeship challenge and, and at BU I was placed on the mentorship of a PhD student, arun, and he was working on CAR T-cells. Basically we were developing a—because currently CAR T-cells are a cancer therapy. They stand for chimeric antigen receptors and T-cell. They stand for chimeric antigen receptors and T cell, and so what they do is they just like, read or look for antigens and then attack that cell. They target cancer cells. And so what we were working on there was advancing the current CAR technology by adding logic gates, so it would have to detect two different antigens instead of just attacking on one, because the CAR T cells that exist currently could find an antigen on a healthy cell and then destroy that one. So by implementing our AND gate, where both antigens would have to be there, we could make it more accurate and safer.
Speaker 2:Nice. That's such a great sort of scientific experience to have and I'm sure that was an awesome summer research project. I just want to circle back to the STEM pathways for BioBuilder students, so could you tell me a bit more about the collaboration between STEM pathways and BioBuilder?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so BioBuilder and STEM pathways as far as I know, they have an ongoing collaboration and that specific year, and I think this year as well, there's a number of students at the Bell Builder H-SAC that are selected to go to the STEM Pathways program over the summer and that's where you can get the hands-on research at BU.
Speaker 2:Oh, nice, that's awesome, so you get to. So am I correct to saying that you basically get some like university, you know, top university scientific experience? Like that? Pathway is open through BioBuilder. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, nice, that's awesome. That's I wish I had that. There's a lot of other questions I want to ask you, but before we get to that, I mean not too much more. I want to take, you know, maybe five to 10 more minutes, but I want to ask you about are you doing any? You know, are you trying to come back to BioBuilder to do some teaching or mentorship at any point?
Speaker 3:I have always thought about that because during my HSEC there was a TA who was just a grade above us and I always thought it'd be a really cool experience, since teaching is something that I've always considered to be in my future and I just didn't know how. Overall, I think it would be a great experience for me. I just really enjoy teaching in general, even at my school. I'm part of the fellowship at the Writing Center where I teach writing and coach students and yeah, just overall teaching is really cool for me. So I mean I would have loved to do that.
Speaker 2:I saw that you got the Christian A Herder Memorial Scholarship. I'm interested in learning more about you know what the scholarship is for and you know's who's eligible for it, how the process was? Um, yeah, if you could tell me a bit more about that, that'd be awesome yeah, the christian, a herder memorial scholarship is named after the, a former massachusetts governor.
Speaker 3:Governor, it's mainly for students who exhibit like uh, really like deep financial need and then have gone through like a big life-changing event, um, so that's like the main eligibility and to apply you have to be nominated by like a participating organization which are like schools or maybe a like college, um, like program, like support for low-income students, if, if that makes sense, just like some nonprofit organizations are also allowed to nominate. The applications, if I remember correctly, were due earlier spring and then we waited a couple months before I was notified that I received an interview. I received an interview, I finished that and, as far as I understand it, the scholarship is supposed to be like a support for students to be able to that normally wouldn't be able to. The scholarship would give them the chance to study out of state by covering a lot of their financial need. What they cover is up to 50 percent of the cost of attendance of any school within the US. What do you?
Speaker 2:think were? I mean, of course, you mentioned some of what the scholarship was for, but what do you think it was about? Your application or you itself that you felt you know? If anyone else may be in a similar position to you wants to maybe in the future, apply for this scholarship, what can you tell them?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think something I understood as being a important part of my application. Specifically, that during my interview my interviewer told me really stood out to them was one my letter of recommendation from my teacher. She said that when they got it they thought it was amazing and it really stood out as like being a non-generic and specific letter that highlighted a lot of really good qualities about me and like my future successes is what they said. And the second thing would be having a clear sort of direction for my future, if that makes sense. She told me she could really understand like what if they gave me the money, what it would be going for, because I talked a lot about my love for biology, synthetic biology, and like future career plans. I had like things I wanted to do, like future career plans. I had like things I wanted to do, and she said that really stood out to them because they could tell like I was ready for like, going to college and I would be putting the scholarships to good use. Essentially.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, that makes perfect sense and I just want to dig a bit deeper there. So you said in terms of what you want to do, sort of going forward over the next few years, you know, and towards the remaining of high school and college, of course, of course you're interested in science, I what did that sort of include? Is it, hey, I want to do this specific type of research, or I want to do some translation research, or if I want to build a startup company and I'm sure you mentioned BioBuilder in there somewhere so, yeah, I want to learn more about this feature direction.
Speaker 3:Yeah, in my essay I explained a lot about synthetic biology. I started off with the Bible, with your program, and I gave a sort of chronological timeline of what else I've been doing in the field of synthetic biology. I think right now what I'm thinking is, like my big, big dream like shooting for the moon is I want to be able to start, have a startup in aesthetic biology. Um, I think that's that's really my dream, honestly, and so I want to work towards that. And so for college, I want to probably major in, like, either biomedical engineering, or I was considering a biology plus computer science major or something of the sort, and yeah. So right now I'm just trying to finish high school and working on my iGEM project. Igem is starting up soon again, and so I'm just trying to get as much experience in genetics and synthetic biology itself and you know, like synthetic biology itself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, no, of course. And how strong of a platform did BioBuilder give you in terms of developing some of the, you know, foundational skills that you need as a scientist to go on? And you know, build that company, build that startup, do that research.
Speaker 3:Yeah, biobuilder was really like the beginning for me, like the base of like everything else, because it established the skills I needed to be able to do well and like everything I did after that for, like in lab techniques and even like the way of thinking in synthetic biology, like you need your chassis, your parts, things like that and like knowing about, like the different databases to get parts from learning about, about how to even scan through literature that exists to work on your own projects. So things like that overall have really helped me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, of course. And what is your message to some of the students who are looking into the biobuilder program and might be, you know, on the fence, like is it a good program for me? Um, you know why, not really sure. Uh, what is your message? Like future biobuilders, you know by the club members, by midder biobuilder apprenticeship challenge, future challengers. Um, yeah, what's your message to them?
Speaker 3:yeah, I think a message would be that if if you're really on the fence of doing the program or not, I'd say, just do it. I don't think there's anything to really regret. Honestly, it's just been a catalyst for me. Being able to excel and do well academically in STEM. It's taught me a lot and I've really used a lot of the stuff I learned. So I think it's just a good experience for anyone to do.
Speaker 1:Thanks once again to Nico for joining me today. What struck me about our guest was their insight into the importance of mastering scientific basics. They saw that understanding databases, scanning literature and even running DNA gels weren't just routine tasks. They were building blocks for a new way of scientific thinking. Nico recognized that the BioBuilder experience went beyond specific projects, teaching participants how to think like true scientists, and I think this episode will be very useful to anyone interested in learning more about the BioBuilder experience from a student's point of view. Thanks again for tuning in, and if you'd like to learn more about anything Nico and I discussed today, please refer to the show notes. Join me for the next BioBuilder podcast. We'll welcome another wonderful guest whose career has been influenced by BioBuilder's life-changing science. See you next time.