Bacterial Transformation

00:01 Another thing we need to learn a little bit about before we can move forward is the fact that bacteria like to pick up DNA from their environment. Unless us where we can have crossing over and exchange of genetic information.

00:18 Bacteria will obtain genetic information from their environment. In order to do that, they have to be okay with picking it up. It is just one of the mechanisms for them to obtain genetic variation, but it is one that they use pretty frequently. The point is they like to pick up DNA from their environment. This can happen in a couple of different ways.

00:38 We could have the bacteria picking up DNA fragments from the environment may be from other dead bacteria or other sources altogether and then we can have them either pick it up and incorporated into the chromosome or they could pick it up and not really interested in that DNA and chop it into pieces and move on. If they pick up that DNA, we have a genetically modified bacterium. They may also pick up plasmids from the environment or they may pick up fragments of DNA and incorporate them into plasmid. It could either be incorporated into the bacterial chromosome or the plasmid. We utilize this desire of bacteria to pick DNA from their environment to modify a plasmid and ask it to pick up the plasmid from the environment. In that way we can transfer DNA from one organism to another organism.

01:38 We can genetically engineer things.