I have the athletic gene!!
This semester on of the courses I am taking is DNA Technology in Forensic Science, which sounds pretty cool right?
Well, even if it doesn't sound cool to you, these past couple weeks have brought out the total nerd in me, and I love it! Our second third and fourth lab exercise had us extracting and analyzing our own DNA from cheek cells.
The first week we swished a salt water solution in our mouth to pick up some cheek cells and then ran the solution in a centrifuge to separate the cells from the mixture, then mixed with a chelex solution to get rid of metal ions, so that Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) could work. The DNA was put into a hot bath for 10 minutes, and then on ice while PCR tubes were being prepared and put in a thermocycler or the PCR machine.
The second week, we tested to see if we successfully amplified the ACTN-3 gene also known as the athletic gene. We created our own agarose gel to run a gel electrophoresis. We loaded the gel with our uncut DNA, and a ladder that was more of a guide so we knew where the DNA should be showing up, which is around the 300bp area. Looking at the picture you can see the three groups, including mine, were successful at isolating our DNA.
The last week we used a restriction enzyme to cut our DNA and find out what genotype we are. To do this we ran another electrophoresis, half the class did an acrylamide gel and the other did the agarose gel. The possible genotypes for the athletic gene were RR at 206 and 85 bp, XX at 109, 97 and 85 bp, and RX with 206, 109, 97, and 85 bp. When it was all done, everyone's genotypes were up on the overhead and most people in the class were classified as RX, there was one person with XX meaning more endurance, where at least 4 of us had the RR genotype meaning you are a strong athlete with good sprint and power.
Sorry no picture for that one, but I will say I was genotyped a strong athlete, and DNA doesn't lie. If the rest are the labs are anything like this, I know I am going to enjoy this class a lot!
Well, even if it doesn't sound cool to you, these past couple weeks have brought out the total nerd in me, and I love it! Our second third and fourth lab exercise had us extracting and analyzing our own DNA from cheek cells.
The first week we swished a salt water solution in our mouth to pick up some cheek cells and then ran the solution in a centrifuge to separate the cells from the mixture, then mixed with a chelex solution to get rid of metal ions, so that Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) could work. The DNA was put into a hot bath for 10 minutes, and then on ice while PCR tubes were being prepared and put in a thermocycler or the PCR machine.
The second week, we tested to see if we successfully amplified the ACTN-3 gene also known as the athletic gene. We created our own agarose gel to run a gel electrophoresis. We loaded the gel with our uncut DNA, and a ladder that was more of a guide so we knew where the DNA should be showing up, which is around the 300bp area. Looking at the picture you can see the three groups, including mine, were successful at isolating our DNA.
The last week we used a restriction enzyme to cut our DNA and find out what genotype we are. To do this we ran another electrophoresis, half the class did an acrylamide gel and the other did the agarose gel. The possible genotypes for the athletic gene were RR at 206 and 85 bp, XX at 109, 97 and 85 bp, and RX with 206, 109, 97, and 85 bp. When it was all done, everyone's genotypes were up on the overhead and most people in the class were classified as RX, there was one person with XX meaning more endurance, where at least 4 of us had the RR genotype meaning you are a strong athlete with good sprint and power.
Sorry no picture for that one, but I will say I was genotyped a strong athlete, and DNA doesn't lie. If the rest are the labs are anything like this, I know I am going to enjoy this class a lot!
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