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