Thank you for checking out our “30 days of Science Education” series. Use Science Education videos to introduce undergraduates to the lab.
On October 30 we introduced Molecular Cloning—the process of making numerous copies of a DNA fragment, like a gene, by introducing it into a bacterium that will replicate it.
Cells that have the ability to readily take-up this DNA are called competent cells. And although transformation occurs naturally in many types of bacteria, scientists have also found ways to artificially induce and enhance a bacterial cell’s competency. In this video, "Bacterial Transformation: The Heat Shock Method" we discuss one of the ways this can be done: the heat shock transformation. In this video we review what heat shock transformation is, how it works, the principle behind it and how to successfully transform bacteria in the lab.
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