Biology Blog #4: Ten Things To Know for the Biotechnology Test

Polymerase Chain Reaction

1. PCR: Polymerase Chain Reaction consists of three steps: Heating, Cooling and Replication, which helps produce an exponentially increasing population of DNA molecules
2. Targeted strand is only heated after the third cycle
3. Heating denatures the DNA turning them into single stranded

Recombinant DNA

1. Using the restriction enzyme, the recognition sites are cut, and the sticky ends are connected to another pair. then using lygase, the two sticky ends are joined together.
2. EcoRI, SalI, and HindIII will make sticky ends. sticky ends are DNA molecule fragments missing their pairs.
3. SmaI and AluI make blunt ends, which are DNA molecules with their corresponding pair.

Genetic Engineering

1. A plasmid is taken out of a bacterium and a piece of human chromosome is taken out. with sticky ends attached, a new recombined plasmid or chimera is created, and it is re-inserted into bacterium, which reproduces with the chimera inside. thus all of the new bacteria now have plasmids.

Gel Electrophoresis:

1. Separates macromolecules by the rate of movement through an electric field.

Story time:

Let's say that there are three groups of knights who are chasing after a reaallllllyyyyy hot princess. They have to fight through dragons and warriors and other castle-like things in order to get to the girl. So the first group is just made up of three knights, three fat horses and their esquires. naturally, they're going to get caught in the thicket, and the dragon kills them all... their charred corpses are there as markers now. then the second group is made up of just a knight and his esquire, they get past the dragon and slay it, but then all these rebel warriors come and kill them... the swords sticking out of their bodies are the markers. then some uber powered knight-magician guy comes along and wipes out everything and gets to the girl.

Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphisms (RFLP)

1.  so when the gel electrophoresis separates the DNA fragments, they can they be taken apart and put under Restriction fragment analysis
2. southern blotting lets us transfer the DNA in the same sequence of gel electrophoresis. southern blotting also works on non-coding DNA