DNA, Book Shops and Cookies
This blog post is going to be slightly different from previous ones in that I'm simply going to document my day as it's been an interesting mix of focussed work and nonchalant wanderings... My day began at The Natural History Museum in Oxford. My college had organised a biology workshop in which we would be taught how to extract our DNA to assess whether or not we possessed the TAS2R38 gene that enables us to taste a bitter chemical called PTC. The practical involved us learning many modern techniques used frequently in laboratories in many universities. These included the Polymerase Chain Reaction, HaeIII Restriction Digestion and Gel Electrophoresis. The fiddly and careful procedures that we carried out in order to complete the experiment were made worthwhile when we viewed our results under UV light - a clear representation of our individual genotypes; a considerably startling and fairly mind-blowing sight. I then had one of the loveliest afternoons I've had