Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Monday, March 7th: DNA Sequencing

The focus of today's lesson was Sanger Sequencing of DNA (see page 397 of your text if you missed today or want a review of how it works).  First I reintroduced the structure of dideoxynucleotides.  We saw how replication stops if DNA polymerase inserts a dideoxynucleotide into the growing strand.  By using dideoxynucleotides for A, T, G and C we can generate fragments of various lengths using unknown DNA as a template. Gel electrophoresis can then be used to distinguish bands that differ by lengths of just one base.  The results on the gel are used to establish the DNA sequence of the original unkown piece of DNA.

We simulated this process using Pop-It Beads.

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