Thinking Like a Biotechnician

Recombinant DNA, the process of the insertion of one organism's DNA into the DNA of another, requires a transformation. Restriction enzymes, bacterial enzymes that are major tools of recombinant DNA technology, recognizes a specific nucleotide sequence in DNA molecules, and cuts the backbones of the molecules at that sequence. In this experiment, the restriction enzyme I used was Eco RI because it made cuts close to the insulin gene, on both sides, and it could cut the plasmid and cell DNA. In this experiment, I chose a restriction enzyme that cut the plasmid in only one place but if it had cut the plasmid in two different places than the result would not be not just one fragment of DNA, but two fragments of DNA. After the restriction enzyme does its work, there then is a set of double-stranded DNA fragment with "sticky ends", single stranded ends. The bases of these single stranded ends easily form base pairs with the complementary bases on other DNA molecules. Therefore, these ends can be used to join DNA pieces that are from different sources. Using plasmids, small circular pieces of DNA found in bacteria, the recombinant DNA molecules can be made to replicate and function genetically within a cell. Small DNA fragments are inserted into the plasmids, then introduced into bacterial cells. As the bacteria reproduces, so do the recombinant plasmids, resulting a bacterial colony in which the foreign gene has been cloned. The antibiotic I would use in my petri dishes to see if bacteria have taken in my plasmid is kanamycin because it's the one that the plasmid had resistance to, which would help me identify the bacteria that had taken in my plasmid because the bacteria that hadn't would all be killed off. Anitbiotics that I wouldn't use would be tetracycline and ampicillin because the plasmid didn't have resistance to it, which wouldn't help me identify the bacteria that had taken in my plasmid because there would be none since all of them had been killed off. This technology could be important in everyday life because it lets us insert new genes into already there genes, which could be programmed to benefit us by making organisms/plants better or (more) beneficial to us. Some real life examples of this technology being used are pest resistant crops, vaccines, and transgenic animals.