James Burke : Connections³, Episode 7 : "A Special Place", (HQ) 1 of 5

Watch Entire Show: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=546D6462FA77F8A5&playnext=1

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Episode 7 of James Burke's Connections³, which is the last (as far as I know!) installment in the Connections series. In this series, Mr. Burke again takes a fresh approach in exploring main theme of all of these series; which is the way that progress occurs, almost exclusively by accident, and through various (often multi-disciplinary) "connections" between ideas or individuals.

In this series, each episode begins where the last one left off and the whole series concludes with a surprise ending :) I won't give it away because that will spoil all the fun!

Again translating this series into a "K-web path", we can think of it as a set of explorations beginning from one starting point and ending up somewhere in the past, present (or possibly the future) and then left there for a later time (ie. School's out, and it's time to go home!). The next show is then a continuation of the journey through "connection space". See http://k-web.org for more information.

In a sense this series almost reads like a book with various twists and turns (and lots of surprises!), broken up into "chapters" where each chapter starts off where the last one ended.

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[newms3450]

@albinoman13bt You're right that generally electric current is preferred as the separator, but in cases where the frags may have too-similar net charges, gravity might be better. And some of these are probably run overnight, etc.

[albinoman13bt]

@newms3450 Long enough that the broken samples separate enough into distinguishable stripes. I didn't know gravity worked, we didn't do it that way. I doubt any labs have that kind of patience.

[newms3450]

@albinoman13bt : It's simplified here. Yes, that's how you get differing fragments (and thus sized-based fragments). As for the pattern only occurring a dozen times, well that really depends on the size of the probe strand. Lastly, it does not necessarily require electric current (gravity works well too), and it is NOT a question of doing it "long enough". You need to do it for a very specific window of time: too long and your samples fall off the gel.

[albinoman13bt]

I've done "DNA fingerprinting", and that's not how they work. You get an enzyme that cuts a very specific pattern of nucleic acid. This specific pattern might only occur a dozen times in a genome. The genetic samples are replicated many times to get enough material to see (a few microliters). It's electrically pulled through electrophoresis gel. The smaller the snippet of DNA, the quicker and further it moves. Done long enough and you'll get stripes.