Overview

The practical work will be carried out in a state of the art category 2 teaching/research laboratory. Tuition and experimental techniques are supported and enhanced via extensive use of audio/visual technology/tutorials and delivered by research active personal with extensive molecular experience and leaders of research groups focusing on medical-molecular research.

Practical work will employ the following techniques and methodologies

• Tissue culture growth and analysis of Human Cancer lines
• Extraction and purification of RNA from Human Cancer cells
• Fluorometric Quantitation, ‎Agarose gel and microfluidic chip analysis of RNA quality and quantity
• Reverse transcription cDNA synthesis
• Application of the Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) for RQ-PCR analysis of cDNA, RT-PCR molecular cloning, and recombinant plasmid detection (colony PCR).
• Plasmid extraction from bacteria
• Restriction enzyme digestion and ligation cloning of PCR fragments into plasmid vectors
• Methods of growth and selection of recombinant plasmid transformed bacteria
• Extensive utilisation of gel electrophoresis for DNA and RNA analysis and purification of specific DNA fragments
• Introduction to and application of bioinformatic DNA/RNA sequence analysis software

For student revision, lectures, tutorials and practical demonstrations are recorded using the Panopto system

Learning Outcomes

• Demonstrate abilities to prepare and present scientific reports and presentations, containing critical result analysis, to specifically designated formats, adhering to standards comparable to those used in academia and industry

• Demonstrate ability to critically process and analyse experimentally generated data

• Demonstrate broad knowledge and critical understanding of the theories and practical methods of nucleic acid isolation, purification, quantity and quality analysis

• Demonstrate broad knowledge and critical understanding of the theory and practical utilisation of restriction enzymes for molecular cloning

• Demonstrate broad knowledge and critical understanding of the theory and practical utilisation of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) for molecular cloning and DNA analysis

• Demonstrate broad knowledge and critical understanding of transcription, reverse transcription and RNA transcripts