Stuck in our ways

17 February 2022

Hollywood likes to portray scientists as power-hungry industrialists, ready to veer into madness at a moment’s notice. A radioactive spider here, a zombie apocalypse there. That’s simply the price we pay for… innovation (?)

I can’t speak for other scientific disciplines, but none of the biologists I know feel powerful at all. We are all very much at the mercy of the natural order and living organisms are behaviourally, cognitively, and genetically stuck in our ways.

Despite what SciFi movies would have you believe, it is technically very difficult to alter the DNA inside a single cell, let alone a whole population of humans. When a new gene enters a cell, the most likely outcome is that it is degraded by enzymes straight away. The expression of the new gene into protein or integration of its DNA into the cell’s genome are possible but the odds are not in your favour. The cell may even choose to activate programmed cell death (apoptosis) in response to this perceived “attack” from foreign DNA. Opting for self-destruction rather than dealing with the possibility of change - as I said, stuck in our ways.

Each method scientists use to insert new DNA into cells balances the efficiency of DNA uptake, how much of this DNA can be made into functional protein, and the amount of cell death this will cause in our samples. DNA transformation is one of the most common techniques that is a good compromise across these three factors, and it works very well when inserting DNA into bacterial cells.

In the new video (linked below) I cover:

• Comparison to other genetic techniques

• Protocols and reagents

• Interpreting results

Jack.