The purpose of the Molecular Biology laboratory is to allow students to extract a DNA sample from any of the available species, amplify a segment of the DNA using polymerase chain reaction (PCR), run a gel electrophoresis experiment on any of the amplified products, and place a sample in an automatic sequencer to determine the sequence of the amplified segments or genes. When setting up to run a PCR experiment, students must add the appropriate nucleotides, Taq polymerase, and select the correct primers to successfully amplify the desired segment. The student must also set up the PCR instrument with the correct temperatures and dwell times for the denaturation, annealing, and elongation steps. Once the gene sequences have been determined, these can be saved to the lab book for analysis or copied and used in other external analysis web sites.
To use the laboratory, students can select up to eight microcentrifuge tubes and place them in a tube holder. Students can then select species using the species selector and for each selected species add a small DNA sample to any of the tubes in the tube holder using the micropipet. In addition to the DNA samples, students can also add Taq polymerase (Taq), nucleotides (dNTPs) or fluorescently tagged nucleotides (dNTPs tag), and selected primers to the tubes in preparation for amplification of a selected gene or segment by (PCR). Once the tubes have been prepared they can be moved to the PCR machine where the appropriate denaturation, primer annealing, and elongation temperature and dwell times can be configured for a PCR experiment. After the PCR run, samples of the amplified products can be placed in a well on an electrophoresis gel bed and a voltage applied to separate the products into bands to determine the approximate mass of the products. Once a successful amplification of the selected gene has been confirmed, then each amplified product can be placed in the automatic sequencer and the amplified gene sequence determined. Measured gene sequences can be saved to the lab book for further analysis and comparison with other sequences.