Monday, December 14, 2009

York High School Bio Club

We started the year performing a PTC Tasting PCR lab. The kids extracted their DNA, did PCR, then cut the product with a restriction enzyme. The next week we electrophoresed, and then viewed the results. Afterwards, they tasted PTC paper to compare with the results. The test results matched their ability to taste! Very cool. We watched a TED presentation of Bonnie Bassler talking about quorum sensing in bacteria. We were able to obtain some bioluminescent bacteria and plated them. This week we saw them glowing in the dark! After Winter Break we will try raising zebra fish.