"Can you draw me a picture with DNA in it?"

Hello again.

Sorry, I've been away of late. My kids (and then I) got a nasty bout of the tummy bug, so was sidelined for the better part of last week (trust me, the blog was the last thing on my mind). As well, this week is also a little tight on time since I'm hosting another one of my world famous Molecular Biology Workshops, in which a number of scientists come to beautiful Vancouver to learn the ins and outs of this pretty fast paced field.

In any event, every client (and university student) I've taught since offering this type of course, I've made filled out a questionnaire at the beginning of the class - mostly to gauge background and expertise levels, so that I can adjust my course accordingly. Although many of the questions are serious, the last one is a bit of non-sequitur, primarily added so that folks know that my course is a little on the unconventional side. The question is basically the title of this post.

In total, I'd say I've had about 600 or so individuals take a molecular techniques course with me, and so I've been lucky enough to collect about 600 or so doodles. The vast majority of them are chemical in nature (you know, a double helix, or the structure of purine, etc), but on occasion, I get a creative one. This week, I'll try and present a few of them.

Below is the first. A "beer" plasmid I believe.