6 more days till Geneskool…
In 1993, Dr. Kary B. Mullis (La Jolla, California) and Dr. Michael Smith (UBC) split the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. Dr. Mullis is the father of the revolutionary technique called PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction). It allows researchers, forensic technicians and medical technicians (or anyone for that matter) to take a small sample of DNA and amplify it very large proportions. This way when it comes to analyzing the DNA, we have millions of copies of it to work with.
The Nobel Prize website has even put out a game called “The PCR Method: Eye of the Donkey“. Your mission is to recover the stolen “Eye of the Donkey” by revealing that the suspects in custody are indeed the thieves. You will need to PCR the DNA for genetic analysis in order to convict them. (There is a long ‘lecture’ at the beginning of the game. You may choose to skip this intro but the information they provide will probably prove useful later…)
The lab that Geneskool will be using is called the Michael Smith Lab, dedicated to Dr. Smith’s contribution to DNA-based chemistry. He developed a technique to achieve nucleotide specific mutagenesis (or simply put: he discovered how to change one base of DNA at a time). This allows us to do things like study the relation between genes and functions of proteins.
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