Molecular biology

You label cells with isotopes rather than fluorescent substances. Vendors claim that this allows much wider N-way sorts, e.g. 2022 Fluidigm claims around 40/50, because the fluorecent spectrum is too wide to do much more than 7/8 way splits.

Cell sorting

Fluorescent protein

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Fluorescent tag

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Protein tag

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You modify the DNA of a cell and stick a fluorescent protein right before or after another protein. Then when it gets translated, the GFP is stuck to the protein of interest, which hopefully hasn't lost its function as a result, then you can just see the protein of interest.

GFP tagging

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Using green fluorescent protein as a protein tag.

List of fluorescent proteins

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Green fluorescent protein (GFP)

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The 3D structure of GFP is so cool. It is so clearly a bottle with a fluorescent bit well isolated right in the middle. Like a little lamp.

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2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

Staining

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Gram stain

Molecular biology laboratory equipment

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Gel electrophoresis

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Technique widely used to measure the size of DNA strands, most often PCR output of a region of interest.

A simple sample application is gel electrophoresis alelle determination.

Gel electrophoresis alelle determination

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In the case of indel mutations (see limits of gel electrophoresis for minimal size difference issues), it is possible to determine the allele with gel electrophoresis. You can just read out the alleles right in the gel. It is a thing of beauty.

As of 2020, this method appears to be much cheaper than DNA sequencing approaches.

Video 2.

Gel Electrophoresis to Determine Genotype

. Source.

Limits of gel electrophoresis

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Gel electrophoresis separation of SNPs

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1982 www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.80.6.1579 DNA fragments differing by single base-pair substitutions are separated in denaturing gradient gels by Fischer and Lerman (1982). It is possible then.

On the Internet Archive Open Library:

Max Delbrück is quoted as saying:

So in retrospect what the denouement was, was that both the principle of replication and the principle of readout are DNA very simple, and the actual machinery for doing it is immensely complex. That's the way it has turned out."

Nice way to put it.

When Thomas F. Anderson had started taking and publishing the first phage electron microscope images:

Now, Anderson later wrote, "We could really see the phage as tadpole shaped particles, whose heads ranged from 600 to 800 A [...] Anderson wrote. "I remember particularly the reaction of Alfred Hershey's teacher, kindly old Professor J. J. Bronfenbrenner, who had worked on bacteriophages for many years at Washington University in St. Louis. ... When he first saw our pictures ... he clapped the palm of his hand to his forehead and exclaimed, 'Mein Gott! They've got tails!'"

Nice quote from Pauling's Nobel Prize speech highlighting the power and required accuracy of chemical ball and stick models:

The requirements are stringent ones. [...]. In order that the principles of modem structural chemistry may be applied with the power that their reliability justifies, molecular models must be constructed with great accuracy. For example, molecular models on the scale of 2.5 cm 1 angstrom unit, have to be made with a precision better than 0.01 cm.

The book has a few reprints:

1996 www.amazon.co.uk/Eight-Day-Creation-Revolution-Biology/dp/0879694785

Molecular biology bibliography

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Molecular biology documentary

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