Biology 11 AP students in Mr. McCarthy’s and Ms Warner’s classes have recently been manipulating bacteria in a process called “Transformation”. The E Coli bacteria are encouraged to take up a piece of DNA known as a plasmid by treating them to a quick ‘heat shock’, going from an ice bath to water at 42C.

The bacteria are then grown on agar plates and those that have accepted the DNA develop into round colonies representing millions of transformed cells. One of the genes comes from a jellyfish and causes them to make a fluorescent green protein which glows under UV light. These colonies are what you can see in the photograph and enable us to see which bacteria have been transformed.

The experiment demonstrates one of the key concepts in biotechnology, that of using another organism to make a useful product by manipulating its DNA. Insulin and human growth hormone are examples of some products that are made in this way.

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