miniPCR™ @ Rockefeller University Science Saturday

Excerpts from the very nice piece describing stories from Rockefeller University’s recent science fair, with big thanks to Jeanne Garbarino…

Dr. Ezequiel Alvarez Saavedra, one of the volunteers for MiniPCR, described this story:

“I had a girl, maybe 7 yrs old, come by the table that left me very impressed by her persistence. I started out the day way too optimistic and set up to have children do PCR- followed by a restriction digest- followed by running a gel. In the end, I ended up mostly talking about what PCR is- and teaching kids how to pipette and load gels. But this girl came towards the beginning and I told her the whole story, and that she would have to come three times to do the whole experiment. She not only managed to set up a PCR by mixing primers, DNA and PCR mix, but then came 30 minutes later to take her PCR out and set up a digest, then came ten minutes later to take the digest out and load a gel, and then came back once again to look at her result. She certainly made my day!”