From many, one.
My cloning experiment began Monday when Dr. Terrence L. Stull of the Children’s Medical Research Institute explained the procedure.
Although Stull and everyone in his lab were too polite to say so, I gather explaining such basic experimental techniques is similar to teaching a child multiplication tables or how to conjugate simple verbs in another language — something exceedingly mundane for an expert. But Stull said he still finds this stuff remarkable.
My little exposure to it in college gave me the same feeling, although I don’t think I have the personality to be a successful scientist.
Paul Whitby, a Ph.D.-holding bacteria researcher from England who works in Stull’s lab, explained how he would swab the inside of my cheek and then isolate and clone a gene active in oxygen transportation. This gene is one the lab has studied in the past, so they are familiar with how to isolate and clone it.
You use specific enzymes to isolate a section of DNA you’re looking for, whose sequence you hopefully already know. You combine it with a plasmid (a circular piece of bacterial DNA into which other DNA can be spliced), which takes up the new DNA. The bacteria then can be grown in such a way that you can tell which ones have taken up plasmids with the new DNA. To be sure you have what you want, you sequence the DNA.
Should we successfully get my gene spliced and taken up, we could then grow bajillions of clones of the bacteria.
I have two more visits to make before the process is complete. I’ll go into a little more detail and explain practical applications when I write my story.
From many cells to one, back to many. E Pluribus Unum. Sort of.
For health and medical news and commentary, read The Medicine Bag blog at http://blog.newsok.com/health.
Jeff Raymond, Medical Writer