Thinking Like a Biotechnician 

Today we conducted a lab that showed the imitation and the process of inserting plasmid into a bacteria plasmid. Our plasmid had a resistance to ampicllin. As part of this lab we were told to find a restriction enzyme then cut a segment out of the DNA and cut the plasmid open. The enzyme used was closest to an insulin gene. We used an enzyme that was closest to the insulin gene. My group then combined the DNA and plasmid with Ligase. We used tape to represent the Ligase. If we had used kanamycin or tetracycline as our resistance it would have kill our bacteria, so in order to test if bacteria took our plasmid, we used ampicllin because our plasmid has a natural resistance to it and if the bacteria survived then the insertion would be successful. The enzyme restriction that we used to cut the DNA segment was called Hin III. We used Hin III because it cut the the human gene in two places and cut the plasmid in only one 1 place. The reason for this criteria is because if the restriction enzyme cut the bacteria in more than one place, then the lyase would not know where to attach the insulin gene to. This is important in every day life, because it is used to create many known antibiotics and show, so that we can test and use these products. This technology can also be used today to create longer lasting foods or help kill viruses.