All manner of human creativity on display
David Ng is Director of the Advanced Molecular Biology Laboratory at the University of British Columbia - this is a just a fancier way of calling himself a science teacher.
Benjamin Cohen is an Asst. Professor of Science, Tech., and Society at the University of Virginia. He studies the place of S & T in environmental history, policy, and ethics. He also writes other stuff.
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Category: Ethics Palace: Where ethical questions go to live or die
Posted on: September 25, 2006 8:24 AM, by David Ng
However, unlike the MRI (which had strong personal significance), this time the sequencing data, hung by the lamp to the right, is of nothing in particular. Thanks everyone for the comments - it was interesting and also valuable. Nice to know that readers appreciate the nuances in scenarios such as this. Nuances are important in so many things.
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Comments
Wow! I didn't know people used gels any more!
I have some of old autorads hanging around to show students and software engineers, but I assumed that everyone, today, used fluorescent labeling and genetic analyzers.
Posted by: Sandra Porter | September 25, 2006 2:31 PM
We do a manual gel experiment in one of the labs I teach, primarily because students have always thought it was pretty cool to do it old school (i.e. students would always say to keep it in the syllabus). I figure we can get away with not doing the more up to date cycle sequencing, because this lab course has upteem other PCR based experiments already.
Posted by: David Ng | September 25, 2006 2:50 PM
That makes sense.
I didn't want to mess with getting a license for using radioactivity, so I used to have my students do their sequencing reactions with a biotinylated primer, transfer the DNA from their gels to a filter, and detect the DNA with anti-biotin antibodies conjugated to alkaline phosphatase, and the substrate.
Radioactivity would made it all sooooo much easier.
Posted by: Sandra Porter | September 25, 2006 9:56 PM
you guys are making those words up, right? i get it, i get it. very funny, biologists.
Posted by: BRC | September 26, 2006 8:33 AM
Sandra, Don't mind Ben - he's, like an "engineer" or something.
Posted by: David Ng | September 26, 2006 10:38 AM
Ben,
I never make up words. That's why we hire marketing and business people!
Posted by: Sandra Porter | September 26, 2006 11:06 AM