#biology

2020

1. Jan 24 CoronavirusThere is currently a lot of news dedicated to an outbreak of coronavirus in China and the US. I wanted to understand more about this virus with the knowledge that I have gained on …
2. Jan 17 Gene transfer in plantsInserting genes into plants is how we get GMOs and other cool plants
3. Jan 10 Creating a virusViruses 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 …
4. Jan 3 DNA ExtractionIn 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.

2019

1. Dec 27 DNA sequencing methodsOne 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 …
2. Dec 20 BioinformaticsHow computers can be effectively applied to biology
3. 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.
4. Dec 8 Useful resourcesAn ongoing list of useful resources
5. Dec 7 PlasmidsPlasmids 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 …
6. Nov 27 Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR)PCR is a common lab technique used to amplify a gene for use in further tests or steps.