Originally published Jan. 14, 2014 and updated Apr. 14, 2020. Any newcomer who joins a molecular biology lab will undoubtedly be asked to design, modify, or construct a plasmid. A plasmid is a small circular piece of DNA found in bacterial cells, and someone new to plasmids may ...
Plasmid incompatibility is defined as the inability of different plasmids to be maintained in one bacterial cell. In this Plasmids 101 post, we’ll cover why this happens, how it might affect your work, and how understanding it can be used for good. First, why are plasmids ...
You’ve worked hard to purify your gene of interest, get it into your plasmid backbone, and zap the mixture of DNA into cells. Unfortunately, not every cell successfully takes up plasmid DNA. Among those that do, some now have plasmids that contain your gene of interest, but ...
Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) is the movement of genetic material between organisms. It plays a key role in bacterial evolution and is the primary mechanism by which bacteria have gained antibiotic resistance and virulence. Scientists have studied how HGT occurs in nature and ...
Biotin and its binding partner avidin are commonly used today in molecular biology for an array of different techniques and protocols. In this post we will discuss the natural role of biotin, biotinylation, the discovery of the biotin-avidin interaction and the uses of ...
A similar genetic code is used by most organisms on Earth, but different organisms have different preferences for the codons they use to encode specific amino acids. This is possible because there are 4 bases (A, T, C, and G) and 3 positions in each codon. There are therefore 64 ...
You’ve spent days and weeks thinking of an amazing project. You’ve written your protocols, designed your experiments, and prepared your reagents. You’re going to engineer the best thing since CRISPR; you are ready to clone! But...how?
The central dogma in molecular biology is DNA→RNA→Protein. To synthesize a particular protein DNA must first be transcribed into messenger RNA (mRNA). mRNA can then be translated at the ribosome into polypeptide chains that make up the primary structure of proteins. Most ...
