PCR!!!

There was a time when to amplify DNA, You had to grow tons and tons of tiny cells. (Oooh) Then along came a guy named Dr. Kary Mullis, Said you can amplify in vitro just as well.

Just mix your template with a buffer and some primers, Nucleotides and polymerases too. Denaturing, annealing, and extending, Well it’s amazing what heating and cooling and heating will do.

[Chorus] PCR when you need to detect mutation (detect mutation) PCR when you need to recombine (recombine) PCR when you need to find out who the daddy is (who’s your daddy?) PCR when you need to solve a crime (solve a crime) [x2]

Link to movie (you HAVE to see this!!!): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5yPkxCLads&feature=related
My teacher in Biotech showed us this movie in class. It's a commercial for BioRad (biotechnology company) and I love it. It's the best song in the entire world it even beats wizard rock.
The song text tells you pretty well what PCR it is. You take a test tube, put in some stuff in it and do "heating and cooling and heating". The DNA will split, special designed primers will attaches if you have the special gene we are searching for and then polymerase will fill it in. This will happen about 30 times and you end up with millions of the same gene, and then you run it on a gel. If you have the gene, there will be a mark and if you don't, then nothing will happens.
We will start with our PCR lab tomorrow. I'm really excited and I hope it will go well. We are doing it on a ALU piece that not everyone have.
ALU is a mutation in form of a "jumping gene". It gets copied to RNA, and then "back copied" to DNA again, and then jumps in to a place in the gene. Because of this 5%!!! of our DNA is ALU! It only exist in primates.

Picture of our chromosomes and how much of it that is ALU. (green is ALU)