Mama Ji’s Molecular Kitchen

The longevity research literature citations that appear in this blog or in my treatise are increasingly likely to refer to recombinant DNA laboratory analysis techniques like Western blot analysis, PCR, Alkaline lysis, Column chromatography, Sanger sequencing, Agarose gel electrophoresis, Radio-immune precipitation, and Sodium dodecyl (lauryl) sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis.     If you have not studied these, after repeatedly coming across some of them you may wonder what in the dickens they are, how they work and what they are good for.  I recently came across Mama Ji’s Molecular Kitchen, a web site that explains a number of these basic techniques in simple language.  Further, it tells you in a cookbook fashion how to go about doing each of them if you are so inclined.  The site also covers a few key molecular genetic entities like Plasmids and Restriction Enzymes.

My basic message is that if you are reading a research report of otherwise great interest but come across entities you know nothing about, you don’t necessarily have to let yourself be thrown.  In many cases the concept behind an arcane technical term is quite simple: 

·        Take PCR (polymerase chain reaction) for example.  “Let’s say you have a biological sample with trace amounts of DNA in it. You want to work with the DNA, perhaps characterize it by sequencing, but there isn’t much to work with. This is where PCR comes in. PCR is the amplification of a small amount of DNA into a larger amount. It is quick, easy, and automated. Larger amounts of DNA mean more accurate and reliable results for your later techniques(ref).”  

·        Restriction Enzymes, another example, are used as scissors for cutting DNA.  “Restriction enzymes, also known as restriction endonucleases, are enzymes that cut a DNA molecule at a particular place. They are essential tools for recombinant DNA technology. The enzyme “scans” a DNA molecule, looking for a particular sequence, usually of four to six nucleotides. Once it finds this recognition sequence, it stops and cuts the strands. This is known as enzyme digestion(ref).”

About Vince Giuliano

Being a follower, connoisseur, and interpreter of longevity research is my latest career, since 2007. I believe I am unique among the researchers and writers in the aging sciences community in one critical respect. That is, I personally practice the anti-aging interventions that I preach and that has kept me healthy, young, active and highly involved at my age, now 93. I am as productive as I was at age 45. I don’t know of anybody else active in that community in my age bracket. In particular, I have focused on the importance of controlling chronic inflammation for healthy aging, and have written a number of articles on that subject in this blog. In 2014, I created a dietary supplement to further this objective. In 2019, two family colleagues and I started up Synergy Bioherbals, a dietary supplement company that is now selling this product. In earlier reincarnations of my career. I was Founding Dean of a graduate school and a full University Professor at the State University of New York, a senior consultant working in a variety of fields at Arthur D. Little, Inc., Chief Scientist and C00 of Mirror Systems, a software company, and an international Internet consultant. I got off the ground with one of the earliest PhD's from Harvard in a field later to become known as computer science. Because there was no academic field of computer science at the time, to get through I had to qualify myself in hard sciences, so my studies focused heavily on quantum physics. In various ways I contributed to the Computer Revolution starting in the 1950s and the Internet Revolution starting in the late 1980s. I am now engaged in doing the same for The Longevity Revolution. I have published something like 200 books and papers as well as over 430 substantive.entries in this blog, and have enjoyed various periods of notoriety. If you do a Google search on Vincent E. Giuliano, most if not all of the entries on the first few pages that come up will be ones relating to me. I have a general writings site at www.vincegiuliano.com and an extensive site of my art at www.giulianoart.com. Please note that I have recently changed my mailbox to vegiuliano@agingsciences.com.
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