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00:14

Okay, we're on...next lesson: DNA technology, with Dr. Ruth Tennen.

00:19

So Ruth, tell us, what does cloning mean when we're talking about genes?

00:24

Like, we hear about cloning all the time in the press, and there's like frogs and sheep and congressmen who've all been cloned.

00:30

How does cloning work?

00:33

Run us through what that means.

00:36

So cloning in the context of DNA basically means isolating a piece of DNA or a gene...

00:41

...from an organism, and then putting it into another context, like into another piece of DNA or into another organism in many copies.

00:49

How do we isolate a gene?

00:53

That sounds very...technical.

00:57

Yeah, so the basics of doing that is like...let's say you've got your chromosome...

01:02

...and there's a gene that's somewhere on there...

01:04

There are special enzymes, called restriction enzymes, that can chop out the gene of interest.

01:09

And we can manipulate the restriction enzyme? We can actually inject that into a gene and ourselves pull out that code?

01:17

Yeah, basically you isolate the DNA from whatever source you want and then you just add the enzyme in a tube and it does its thing

01:24

Enzymes are derived from bacteria, so we didn't actually make them in most cases, but we figured out what they do.

01:30

So we've pulled out that isolated gene...and then...what do we do with it? What happens?

01:40

Usually, before you can do anything -- a gene by itself can't do much -- you usually have to put it into some sort of carrier or vector.

01:46

This is called a plasmid, which is basically a circular piece of DNA that you can put other DNA into.

01:51

So you can stick your gene of interest into this plasmid, and then you can do cool things with your plasmid like...

01:55

...put it into bacteria or put it into other cells, and kind of study the function of your gene.

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