Hulk, I split this topic, as things were diverging too far from the original topic (extraction of DNA). Please bear that in mind in the future.
Anyway...
Could you elaborate how you'd go about it?
Where would you get the luciferase gene from? You can order it, of course, but be prepared to pay.
Same goes for plasmids, primers, PCR reactants, cell lines, etc - and if you are starting from scratch, this costs you (from common suppliers like
Qiagen, New England BIolabs, etc) at least a thousand pounds in excess.
Finding ways to do these things yourself? No chance. You can't synthesise DNA primers yourself, without massive equipment/funds. Ordering them is
cheaper (about 80 pence per base). Nucleotides, Taq polymerase, homemade? Again, no chance. For the latter a trip to yellowstone or new Zealand is
required. For the former a good chemical synth. lab.
Not to mention a PCR cycler, which admittedly can be done yourself once all the reagents are available.
I absolutely agree that it is exciting to find ways to do things such as these yourself. However, there are much less impossible tasks than trying to
clone genes (unless, as usual, you have lots of spare money - and you can simply buy the reagents. Then, cloning luciferase is trivial. 2 Weeks and
you'd have your glowing cell batch (btw on the subject of glowing bacteria, there already is a thread on it).
Tissue culturing? I'd start with plant cells. Some are actually very easy to culture. Mammalian cells... again you need reagents en masse. Serum,
growth factors etc. Cloning into mammalian cells is not as easy as with bacteria. They are fickle, and die soon unless they are cancerous.
If you have more ideas, do write them here (as long as they don't involve heavy duty cloning), as I am myself interested in making biochem more
accessible to the layman.
Never Stop to Begin, and Never Begin to Stop...
Tolerance is good. But not with the intolerant! (Wilhelm Busch)
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