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Plasmids
What is a plasmid? Whenever I start looking into genes and genomes, I eventually end up at a circular diagram with highlighted sections with gene name labels. I understood that these represented genetic information, but I didn’t really understand why I should care about them.
Being new at this whole biology thing forces me to remind myself of the fundamentals pretty often. In this case, I have to go back to the fundamentals of what DNA actually is.
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Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR)
Why do synthetic biologists use PCR? One of the foundations of synthetic biology is being able to put new genes into organisms that did not previously have them. Unfortunately, genes don’t naturally come in buckets of purified DNA segments; we have to make those ourselves. And this is where PCR comes in. If you happened to find a really cool jelly fish that glowed under UV light, you sequenced that jellyfish’s genome, and identified the gene that makes it glow, you might be able to take that gene from the jellyfish and add it to other organisms in order to make them glow as well.
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Why I'm writing a synthetic biology blog
Back when I was first starting on my adventures in software, there was so much to learn. Even with the copious resources available, I still found it difficult to wrap my head around concepts that people were writing about. I felt like if someone could frame the problem for me correctly - and sometimes someone would - then I would have been able to learn things much faster. This will be a blog about my adventures into biology.
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About
My name is Peter Klipfel, and I have many interests. I currently love my work at Geodesic where I am building out the future of virtual experiences.
When I’m not at work, I enjoy:
Microbiology and biotechnology Unreal Engine Climbing Riding my motorcycle - specifically adventure riding Anything involving snow If any of these things interest you, please feel free to reach out
Here’s some JS that will spit out my email.
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I wanted to write a post about all the books that I read in 2020, and a brief overview of what I thought
AI Superpowers - This is a good read. It is obviously biased toward China being the greatest place for businesses, but has interesting things to say. On Intelligence - I love brains. This is the “brain” equivalent to popular science books about our n-dimensional universe or string theory.