Managing Expectations

When you hear about “cloning”, what’s the first image that comes to mind? Frankenstein-esque experimentation carried out in abandoned hospitals, or Clone Clubs filled with identical “sistres”?

I want students to be excited by science, but also realistic about its everyday implications. Rather than making copies of whole organisms, animals or humans, the bulk of the cloning done in molecular biology labs is fusing tiny pieces of DNA together. It’s not exciting, glamorous, or particularly newsworthy, but it’s the necessary grunt-work that makes much of our experimentation possible. Scientists who are experienced in all aspects of molecular cloning and recombinant DNA technology are incredibly valuable across the sector.

You need an in-depth understanding of the molecules at work to fuse DNA from different organisms together, but it is a process fraught with chance and uncertainty. Scientists need to prioritise the rigour of the process over the novelty of the results, and often this means playing the numbers game to maximise our chances of experimental success. Repeating an experiment at scale across hundreds (if not thousands) of samples is often what it takes.

BioLab Collective’s latest video focuses on the basic principles underlying Molecular Cloning - in particular how Colony PCR can speed up the process of screening hundreds of samples to find the right DNA molecule. In the video we walk through:

• Restriction digest

• DNA ligation

• PCR setup and strategy

• Colony PCR protocols

• Interpreting results

Jack.