2018-11-12

[public] 88.4K views, 4.30K likes, 19.0 dislikes audio only

The Thought Emporium

PCR or polymerase chain reaction, is one of the most useful tools in a biologists tool kit. It allows you to take a DNA sample, select a part of it and make millions of copies of that section, amplifying it millions of times over. These newly grown fragments can be used as a diagnostic tool, or to generate pieces that can be used in other processes.

Today we take a deep dive into the world of PCR and explore how it works, how you design the reactions, and how they're run in the lab. In a future video we may also look at how to build the thermocycler that makes this process possible, but there are lots of great tutorials on building them already online.

We also take a step forward in the spider silk project and successfully isolate 1 of the 2 genes we'll need for the project. We're still trouble shooting the other so that will be the topic of a future video. The fragment we isolated is directly usable in our construction pathway and will be inserted to build a new new plasmid we're calling pKlac2g418. This means we're only a few more steps away from finishing our plasmid and making our first spider silks!

Resources:

Spider beer overview - /youtube/video/Fx8TcGrCOSI

Gel electrophoresis - https://www.khanacademy.org/test-prep/mcat/chemical-processes/separations-purifications/v/gel-electrophoresis

Crash course chemistry - /youtube/video/FSyAehMdpyI

Crash course biology - /youtube/video/QnQe0xW_JY4

The manga guide to molecular biology - https://www.amazon.ca/Manga-Guide-Molecular-Biology/dp/1593272022

Genome compiler - https://designer.genomecompiler.com/app

Primer3 - http://primer3.ut.ee

Snap gene - http://www.snapgene.com/

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