Peter Klipfel

Jan 17
Gene transfer in plants
Inserting genes into plants is how we get GMOs and other cool plants
Jan 10
Creating a virus
Viruses can be very useful for synthetic biology. They allow us to add DNA to larger organisms with greater certainty. In this post, I want to add my own understanding to a procedure that I found on the internet.
Jan 3
DNA Extraction
In order to learn about the genes of organisms, we must first get a purified DNA sample. This post goes over what that process looks like.
Dec 27
DNA sequencing methods
One of the driving factors behind the recent explosion in progress in synthetic biology has to do with the cost and speed of genome sequencing and synthesis. I wanted to understand more about how it actually works.
Dec 20
Bioinformatics
How computers can be effectively applied to biology
Dec 12
Bacterial artificial chromosomes (BAC)
BACs are useful for duplicating larger sections of DNA than can be duplicated with PCR or will fit on plasmids.
Dec 8
Useful resources
An ongoing list of useful resources
Dec 7
Plasmids
Plasmids show up everywhere, and are very useful to synthetic biologists. They are short, circular pieces of DNA that are separate from the chromosome of the cell that they inhabit.
Nov 27
Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR)
PCR is a common lab technique used to amplify a gene for use in further tests or steps.
Nov 22
Why I'm writing a synthetic biology blog
I found it difficult to learn programming, but never wrote down my progress. Now maybe my struggles with biology will be able to help someone else.