DIYbio project high school

[paul wright]

Hi guys, 

I am a high schooler who is very interested in synthetic biology. 

I was wondering what resources are available for me to engineer a plasmid to produce a recombinant protein.  

Also, I was wondering how to learn about the laboratory techniques to produce bacteria with the recombinant plasmid.  

I am a novice on the subject, so any suggestions on how to get started on such a project would be greatly appreciated! 

[Dakota Hamill]

Do you have a specific protein in mind, and want to work with a specific organism?  I find the two threads you just made a little confusing and at odds.  In this one, you say you don't know what a miniprep is, but in the other thread you're already trying to image a YFP tagged protein in C. elegans?

[Koeng]

I was a bit confused on that too, but I assume the 2 have to go hand in hand so I'll post here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_fluorescent_protein

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultraviolet

"excitation peak is 514 nm" and "Ultraviolet (UV) light is electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength from 400 nm to 10 nm"

I am by no means an expert on YFP or imaging, but this might be your problem

I was a novice home-lab (Assumed because of no fluorescent microscrope) at one time too, and I'll have to recommend not trying something too ambitious in just a home lab. E coli transformation kits from Carolina are a good place to start for anyone. However, even though I have a fully functioning home lab,  I still dont work in it as much as my time at the university or LA biohackers. It's simply not very efficient because of a variety of reasons that people have been trying to solve here and are making progress on, but still is a work in progress.

If you're in highschool and want simply to do a science fair project, I would recommend looking for a biohacker space in your local area, or even better a professor you can ask to study under. Mentors are VERY VERY helpful. 

With the right tools, you can clone a recombinant expression plasmid from planning to sequence verification in 2 and a half days. That's with the right tools, including a lot of knowledge on the topic. When I cloned my first vector, it took about 5 months for completion (in home lab) with all the troubleshooting I had to do because I didn't know what I was doing, and I didn't even get full sequence verification for it. You don't want to be stuck in that position: get someone to help you 1 on 1. I know plenty of people in highschool that ask professors to work on projects, in fact even top winners have done that! A lot of times labs want a few highschoolers to show their lab projects at science fairs so they get additional funding. On the DIYbio side, you get FULL control of your project, from start to finish, and it's also pretty impressive because you were devoted enough and it's sincerely your idea. Since you seem a bit unsure about what exactly you want to do, I would say emailing professors and checking around local biohacker labs would be best. Working at an actual lab will give you invaluable experience if you want to do a DIY project later (I'm sure almost all of the common posters in this group have some connection with academic organizations or businesses in their past or presence).

Also, going back, remember not to be too ambitious but to set goals you can achieve. If you want to make a recombinant protein, make a recombinant protein. If you want to study C elegans, study C elegans. Multiple large projects simply stack up until all aren't very good. 1 successful project is more impressive than 10 failed ones: don't over extend your resources

Although, to get you started, check out "Gibson assembly", "pUC19", "sanger sequencing", "neb IMPACT", "his tagging", "restriction enzyme cloning", "expression vector system", "PCR", "electrophoresis", "E coli transformation", and "gBlocks" to get an idea of what's out there. 

-Koeng

[Dakota Hamill]

Koeng gives good advice, find a mentor.  Email Professors within a 50 mile radius of your home and tell them what you're working on and see if they'll meet for lunch (every single one I've ever asked has).  Leverage your age and use it to your benefit to get an internship or summer research study.  Most professors probably would love to help out an ambitious high school student, but that might not be the case when you're 25, 30, or 40.  

You can only learn so much from books or google.  Nothing, NOTHING beats working under a mentor who can teach you hands on skills.  Get in on a project now and your college acceptance change will increase exponentially.  

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[paul wright]

Hi guys, 

thanks for the responses! 

My C. elegans project is actually what I'm completing right now, this question was for brainstorming ideas for next year.  

On Saturday, February 14, 2015 at 5:33:00 PM UTC-8, paul wright wrote: