• Question: What recent experiments have you done?

    Asked by 935frah46 to Sandra, Hummy on 6 Mar 2017. This question was also asked by LU-BallerZ.
    • Photo: Sandra Greive

      Sandra Greive answered on 6 Mar 2017:

      The last experiment I did was to cut a long piece of DNA into shorter bits with a DNA restriction enzyme. This part worked as I could see the different sized bits of DNA stained and separated on an agarose gel. I then tried to separate each sized piece of DNA from all the others using anion exchange chromatography. This is where you pass the DNA pieces over a special matrix that likes to bind negatively charged things like DNA. The more negatively charged a molecule is (in this case, the longer the DNA is) the better it will bind to the matrix. In theory, long pieces of DNA will stay bound for longer and the short pieces will come off sooner. BUT, this didn’t work at all. I need to try a few things to figure out why it didn’t work and what I need to do to make it work.

Comments