2003-11-22 14:57:14.176618+00 by petronius 3 comments
Tired of using that old-fashion chemistry set to make stink bombs or some crystal meth? Discovery.com now offers the DNA Explorer kit, which allows you to do elecrophoresis studies and maybe figure out if your dad REALLY is your father. And imagine next year's science fair, when you clone your sister!
[ related topics: Biology Cool Technology ]
comments in ascending chronological order (reverse):
#Comment Re: Home Gene Splicing? made: 2003-11-22 15:30:52.572361+00 by: J2
A friend of mine and I were joking the other day, outside of my University's biotech center, that it wouldn't be long before kids would be running their own DNA paternity tests to discover who really is their daddy. Of course we were just laughing it off. Then I saw this in Wired. Shouldn't be long now.
(I am glad I am not the only one who thought about the "who's your daddy?" aspect of this.)
#Comment Re: Home Gene Splicing? made: 2003-11-22 15:43:18.43146+00 by: debrahyde
Yeah, I saw this two and if it wasn't for all the anime DVDs and gaming items on the holiday shopping list, we'd probably get this for family together time. OTOH, maybe I'll see if my son could use this for an indie study project....
Deb
#Comment Re: Home Gene Splicing? made: 2003-11-22 19:00:25.988095+00 by: Dan Lyke
A friend's daughter in Marin Catholic did electrophoresis and the "glowing bacteria with jellyfish genes" as part of her regular high school curriculum. None of these suggestions are that far out, although getting gene samples from the tennis coach to confirm paternity might be tricky.
I mentioned before that Scientific American did a series on PCR in your kitchen, and I also mentioned A Low-Cost Approach to PCR, targeted at making cheap labs in developing countries for doing things like faster disease identification, but which could be combined with some garage scale scrounging to build a setup for doing PCR![[Wiki]](/adbanners/lookingglass.png){kind=small}
and electrophoresis for peanuts.