Central Dogma
DNA's shape, often described as a twisted ladder.
What is the double helix?
The microbe that makes bread rise and beer ferment.
What is yeast?
This technique copies a stretch of DNA millions of times using heating and cooling cycles.
What is PCR?
The handheld tool for moving microliter volumes. The first thing you learn to hold correctly.
What is a micropipette?
The 'i' in iGEM stands for this, because teams compete from all over the world.
What is International?
DNA is copied into this single-stranded molecule before any protein gets made.
What is RNA (mRNA)?
Not quite alive, and needs to hijack a host cell to reproduce.
What is a virus?
A small circle of DNA, separate from the chromosome, used to carry genes into cells.
What is a plasmid?
Pressurized steam in this machine sterilizes media and glassware.
What is an autoclave?
The GEM in iGEM stands for Genetically Engineered _____.
What are Machines?
The process of making an RNA copy from DNA.
What is transcription?
Microbes that thrive in boiling, salty, freezing, or acidic conditions.
What are extremophiles?
A gene like GFP, added so you can see whether your construct actually worked.
What is a reporter?
Cloudy media and fuzzy colonies usually mean this happened to your culture.
What is contamination?
Teams document the entire year on one of these public, editable websites, and it gets judged.
What is a wiki?
This small RNA ferries amino acids to the ribosome.
What is tRNA (transfer RNA)?
Bacteria signaling each other chemically to act once enough of them are present.
What is quorum sensing?
Putting antibiotic resistance on your plasmid lets you do this to the cells that took it up.
What is select for them?
The document that tells you a chemical's hazards and what to do if you spill it.
What is an SDS (safety data sheet)?
Beyond the bench, this sub-team must engage the public and stakeholders in this part of the project.
What is human practices?
Three codons don't code for an amino acid at all, they do this instead.
What is stop (terminate translation)?
Bacteria glued together in a slimy layer; dental plaque is one.
What is a biofilm?
The final check that your construct is what you think it is: reading every base back.
What is sequencing?
A single drop on a Nanodrop tells you this about your DNA sample.
What is its concentration and purity (A260/A280)?
The host organism you put your engineered DNA into.
What is the chassis?