Looking for a way to keep your immunology or virology lessons fresh? Consider teaching the lesson from a biomedical diagnostic point of view! Here, we describe how the West Nile Virus can be used to teach the Enzyme Linked Immunosorbent Assay (or ELISA). What…
Tag: DNA
Biotech Basics: A Plasmid Primer
What are plasmids? In 1952, Nobel Prize Winner Joshua Lederberg introduced the term ‘plasmid’, a double-stranded, circular DNA molecule that naturally exists in bacterial cells and some eukaryotes (Fig. 1). Plasmids have been used by molecular biologists to study, analyze,…
Teaching Genetic Diversity using Forensic Science
Explore genetic diversity with a cutting edge forensic science experiment! Your students become crime scene investigators as they analyze biological evidence using DNA fingerprinting, a technique that identifies people via genetic differences called polymorphisms. Gel electrophoresis is used to create…
