Synthetic biology is aninterdisciplinary science including biotechnology, bioengineering, genomics,material science, systems biology, evolutionary biology, bioinformatics andcomputation, and so forth. It seeks to redesign, reconstruct, and create newbiological molecules and parts, devices, and biosystems to accelerate life scienceresearch and meet the needs of developing new bioenergy, medical diagnosis, andtherapy.     It is based on the advantagesof studying molecular biology, cell biology and systems biology, and hasachieved rapid development in recent years. In this synthetic biology course,we introduce topics by giving background information on basic biologicalcomponents, genome editing, regulation of gene expression, protein engineering,cell circuits and engineering, and medical diagnosis and applications. The courseemphasizes two important fields of synthetic biology: Optogenetics andchemogenetics to learn the concepts, technology development and applications.The course also provides opportunities for students to learn challenges and themost recent technical progress in synthetic biology through literature readingand discussion.     The main objectives of thiscourse are: 1. To expose students to the basic knowledge and trends insynthetic biology; 2. To develop students’ innovative and critical thinking; 3.To improve the skills of literature reading and presentation. It is hoped thatstudents can apply the techniques and logical thinking to their own researchprojects, laying an important foundation for further study and scientificresearch.