More on Restriction Enzymes and Gel Electrophoresis

Today we reviewed Restriction Enzymes and Gel Electrophoresis.

Homework for tomorrow: handout from today and prelab questions

Here is a great site for more practice with gel prediction, plasmids, and restriction enzymes.
Practice Reading a Gel (you can do the entire game for more instruction).

Here is a video that also takes you through a tutorial of what we did today.

Restriction Enzymes

Today we discussed Restriction Enzymes and Gel Electrophoresis.

Watch the video from start to 9:28 and then using the notes from today and the video:
 Can you answer the following questions?
1. In what organism do you find restriction enzymes?
2. What are restriction enzymes used for in that organism?
3. What are the nucleotide sequences that a restriction enzyme looks for called?
4. Why does the organism's own DNA not get cut into pieces?
5. What are the small circular pieces of DNA called in the organism and what is usually found on these circles?


We also went over how to tell band size resulting from plasmids being cut by restriction enzymes.

Here is a video (watch till 4:50) on how to read a gel


 We also began talking about Gel Electrophoresis. (remember this is also in the above video)

Here is the virtual lab link
Can you answer the questions below?
1. What does GE do?
2. What type of charge does DNA have?
3. What do the black and red cords represent?
4. Which DNA 'runs' closer to the bottom (small or large)?

Here is the picture you will use from your lab to answer the postlab questions (the wells are on the left)