Profile my DNA, babe.

moonbird — Sat, 15 Nov 2003 08:10:21 -0800

DNA profiling may be a complex issue, but whatever your take, go ahead and try your hand at genetic sleuthing with this spiffy flash interactive.

By: majick

majick — Sat, 15 Nov 2003 09:37:21 -0800

It's not terribly interactive, consisting chiefly of "click here, click there, yay, you did it!" Nevertheless it's a good, bite-sized explanation of the DNA profile matching process.

By: Belgand

Belgand — Tue, 18 Nov 2003 00:03:56 -0800

Eh, pretty good for the layman, but I do research in a molecular genetics lab and thus do this sort of thing every day. Want a more realistic idea of what gel electrophoresis is like? Well, first you make up a tube consisting of a very small (like 20 microliters or 20*10^-6 or 20 millioneths of a liter) amount of DNA to run and a bit of loading buffer. Basically it's a blue dye that you can see on the gel as it runs and use to detect bands later on. Then we make up the gel itself. It's a lot like making Jell-O really. Add some powder to some liquid, boil, pour into the mold, put a "comb" into it, and let it cool down. The comb is a bit of plastic with some little nubs sticking down and will create wells in the gel. You then place the gel in it's tray into a gel box, add some fluid, and then load the DNA/buffer solution into the wells (you use a micropipeter, not an eyedropper, but it's kinda, sorta the same idea). Plug the box into a power supply and wait about 3 hours or so. Pull the tray out and place the gel in a tray containing some water, add some ethidiome bromide (careful, it's mutagenic!) to this and let it stain for 15 min. or so. Then look at it under a UV lamp and you'll see banding. If you want a scale you need to also run a marker, a bit of DNA that has already been digested with the size of each band already known. Each gel will look different so you need to use a marker every time as it won't look the same twice. Also interpreting the bands can be a bit tough. Very rarely are they ever as clear and discrete as shown for a variety of reasons. It's honestly a very simple procedure and something almost anyone could be taught to do in about 20-30 min.

Comments on: Profile my DNA, babe.

Profile my DNA, babe.

By: majick

By: Belgand