This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American
I am completely snowed under with real work at the moment. There are two very important deadlines coming up which means that my time for blogging, or indeed any kind of non-work related writing, is severely limited. I'll be putting up some archived posts from my old blog until I can get back to proper blogging, but for now, have a science song!
This is The Gibson Assembly song, written by the Cambridge iGEM team 2010. If you can't see it, want it in a higher resolution or just want the link to share, find it here.
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The technique they are describing is the "Gibson Assembly" which is a fairly quick and painless way of joining two bits of DNA. In more sciency terms, it works by using PCR to make genes with large overlaps (40bp) at the end. You add a Master Mix to the fragments, incubate for one hour, then just transform into whatever cell you're using. For more details of how it works go here, for the recipe of the Master Mix and detailed protocol go here, and for a program to help you design Gibson Primers, go here.
The video was just made for fun, and took less than a week to put together (not counting the time to write the words!). Filming was done mostly over one day, using one camera and a slightly broken tripod, just using spaces in the lab and the gel room. The green-screen sections were done by throwing a green table cloth over some poster display boards. The music was recorded seperately, and I think each instrument was recorded seperately as well, to get the sound balance right. It was all carried out by about nine undergraduates (and one lab rat!) and massively confused most of the supervisors.
It was fun :)
