This week, we made gel electrophoresis art using Lambda phage DNA and ten restriction enzymes. Gel electrophoresis uses a positive charge to pull negatively charged DNA through a conductive gel. Longer strands move slower and shorter strands move faster meaning that different lengths of DNA fragments will appear as different bars in your gel. To use this in an artistic context we take our input Lambda DNA and cut it to different lengths using different restriction enzymes which allows us to have coarse control over where these bars end up and thus we can make art with it. I have decided to really commit to my favorite animal, turtles, this semester and try to have a turtle-inspired theme to all of my projects. In an ideal world this is what I wanted my gel art to look like.
However, it was really hard to design this with such coarse control, I spent hours on Ronan's website to no avail before eventually deciding on something simpler, my initials: AH.
Gel Art - Restriction Digests and Gel Electrophoresis
This was my first time making a gel and it was amazing to go through the entire process. I worked with Terry Luo and Sean Murphy, we tried to make an “AH” and ended up with the letters “LU”
Making gel by mixing 1% agave with conductive liquid (TAE buffer) and DNA stain.
Pouring gel once cool and inserting comb to create wells and lanes for DNA to travel
Preparing solutions based on recipe: distilled water + cutsmart buffer + lambda DNA + enzymes
Putting tubes in incubator
Preparing final solution for gel: diluting digest with water and adding loading dye
Loading digest in gel wells, it was really hard to keep my hand steady and not peirce the bottom
Gel completely set up, starting run
It only got this far after 45minutes so we ran it as is though more time would've led to more vertical spread
Viewing results in the transilluminator. It mostly worked but there were a few mistakes. We didn't wait long enough to get a farther vertical spread, and we had some contamination between lanes (likely caused earlier on by forgetting to swap the pipette tip), but overall it was a success. We got "LU" instead of "AH" but this ended up being better because LU stands for love you and it was right before Valentines day.
