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A laboratory exercise in comparative DNA analysis
Author(s) -
Brown Lesley R.
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
biochemistry and molecular biology education
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.34
H-Index - 39
eISSN - 1539-3429
pISSN - 1470-8175
DOI - 10.1002/bmb.2003.494031030210
Subject(s) - liberal arts education , set (abstract data type) , variety (cybernetics) , dna , computational biology , computer science , biology , artificial intelligence , biochemistry , higher education , political science , law , programming language
This report describes a laboratory exercise that is used in an upper level biochemistry course at a small liberal arts college. The laboratory exercise was designed with three major learning objectives in mind. The first objective is that students learn how to isolate and purify plasmid DNA. The second is that they understand this process on a molecular level. Last, they analyze their DNA samples using a variety of biochemical and biophysical methods. By comparing and contrasting the results, they are to draw conclusions about which methods would be best under a given set of experimental conditions.