The Motley Crew

I am always relearning lessons that I should have learned years ago. Let me tell you what I mean. This may be a little long but that is nothing new for me, is it?

I have been working on a project at work for the last 7 weeks that has gone no where. It gets frustrating to pound away at something and only make minimal progess and oftentimes no progess at all. It is a cloning project in which I am trying, for lack of a better phrase, to stitch one piece of DNA into another. 10 years of post-secondary education and I am a glorified tailor. The process begins with the polymerase chain reaction (PCR). This is a method of molecular photocopying. You start with a circular piece of DNA (a plasmid) that has your gene of interest in it. With this process, you can either copy the exact gene as it is or you can add (or subtract) additional sequence. After purifying the PCR product, you "rough" up the ends with restriction enzymes. Each enzyme (there are lots of them) recognizes a unique sequence of DNA and therefore you have control over where they cut. In addition to digesting the ends of your PCR product, you also have to open up another piece of circular DNA with complementary ends to the PCR product with restriction enzymes. These two DNA samples are again purfied. They are then added together with another enzyme to ligate the two pieces together. Finally, the new piece of DNA is introduced into bacteria which will go nuts reproducing. Each new bacteria will carry a copy of your new plasmid DNA. The next morning, you isolate and purify the plasmid DNA and analyze the DNA to determine if it is the right stuff. As I said about 10,000 words ago, I have not had any success for the last 7 weeks with this project. The point of this molecular biology textbook is coming up. On Sunday, one of the speakers gave a talk on prayer. I don't remember a thing he said although I had the distinct impression that I wasn't including the Lord in every aspect of my life as often as I should. Monday morning I awoke thinking about my project and as I rolled out of bed to pray, realized that I should ask the Lord for help. I got no obvious answer as I knelt there (I was probably asleep). However, after I got to work, I sat down at my desk and began planning out the days experiments. Suddenly I got the distinct impression that I such use a different strain of bacteria to produce my plasmid. The change was minimal, hardly even a change worth noting in my lab book. Thankfully I was smart enough to listen. Today I was successful. Always remember to include the Lord - no duh, right? You'd think I would have had that lesson down by now. Good night.