Finished up a big read on bacterial genetics: Mutagenesis; in vivo tranformation, transduction, and conjugation; in vitro techniques of sequencing and synthesizing DNA, cloning via plasmids (real and bioengineered), lambda phage cloning vectors, and techniques for site directed mutagenesis. I'm onto R16S ribosomal sequencing to determine hamming distance for phlyogeny trees between families of bacteria.

I think I have an idea for my current home project will be. Since auxotrophic strains of bacillus subtillis are commercially available, along with F+ plasmids that encode gene cassettes conferring antibiotic resistance along with wild strain non-auxotrophic amino acid expressors, I'll attempt to replicate the process of transduction (although I may not be able to prove it's not via pili conjugation instead) between two pure strains of bacillus. I think if I gently lyse the F+ bacteria (or am able to get a purified plasmid extract) and electrophorese the auxotrophic strain, I should show that the genetic transfer was via transduction if it grows on a culture diffused with the given antibiotic and no culture grows from my DNA source on a normal culture.

Someday I will actually have my Motic BA450.


- posted by Aargau @ 7:23 PM (0) comments

 
Still hard at work, I've polished off everything to do with DNA replication, transcription, and translation in Prokaryotes and Archaea. I'll review further when I get into genetics, but right now I've got a good handle on quite a few things: Shine-Dalgarno areas, regulons, variations in sigma factors for RNA polymerase, self-excising introns in RNA, telomerase for linear DNA prokaryotes, helicase, rationale for variance between coding for selenocysteine and a stop codon, different strategies for ribosomal transcription regulation, etc., etc.,

I'm currently deep into virii: methods of replication, phylogeny, strategies for survival, temperate vs lytic, culturing, etc., etc.,

Microscope makers do not want to sell me a microscope at all. Sigh. Nothing yet.
- posted by Aargau @ 9:54 PM (0) comments

 
Back from Australia and New Zealand for a week now, and deep into the Microbiology. I'm studying all of Brock Biology of Microorganisms. Excellent book, one of the best organized textbooks I've seen to date. So far I'm into chapter 5 of this 1000 page book. Partial List of my studies:

Overviews of Bacteria, Archaea, Eukarya, with much interest on my part on extremophiles. I'll probably devote a few blogs to extremophiles.
Memorization of the important macromolecular structures such as nucleosides and phospholipids. Gah, I need more ochem.
Cellular membrane structure with gram positive and gram negative and archaeal cell walls. My current area of extreme interest, primarily transport proteins.
Flagellae, Fimbrae, and biochemical basis of locomotion from chemotaxis through magnetotaxis. Sophisticated AI through chemistry, amazing.
Endospore morphology and formation. Boiling water won't kill endospores.
Catabolic and Anabolic cellular reactions, including most important catabolioc pathways, electron transport, and PMF. Lots of memorization.

The BA450 and its mount for my F828 are due this week, the microscope is actually a wee bit late (grr).

I've also grabbed the MIT textbook on Genetics from Genes to Genomes to study after my current area.

- posted by Aargau @ 11:01 PM (0) comments