DNA Extractions

As I've mentioned before, there are certain moments in the string of routines, adjustments, retries and self-corrections that makes up an experiment which are particularly beautiful or elegant. It's generally the moment when it all makes sense, when you end up with a number which proves that the past three hours of pedantic measuring was not in vain.

In our extraction of DNA (from chicken liver in Molecular & Cellular Regulation), that moment didn't come at the end at all. Yes, we've since got those all important numbers from spectrophotometry and electrophoresis, but the awesome part is the fiddliest. The DNA and a bit of other sludge (proteins etc) are in the bottom of the tube, topped with a layer of ethanol (pipetted ever so carefully down the side of the glass so they don't mix). In goes your glass rod, and ever so delicately you dip it past the interface and swirl it around in the DNA to wind a few strands onto the rod. It's like making the world's tiniest stick of fairy-floss. The strands precipitate out when they reach the ethanol, and hang there, translucent, the stuff we're made of.

I don't believe humans have a 'soul', or anything more than the sum of our parts, than the complexities of the brain. I find it hugely more impressive, more inspiring and wonderful to think of the intricacies of how we work, come about over millions of years by a process born out of randomness and determined by the ability to survive, than to propose that we are something more mysterious.