GMU:BioArt Forum/Ornella Del Monaco

12.04.2023, 13.04.2023 - /Growing, Shaping and Living (with) Microalgae with biologist Johann

In this first workshop we learned and worked with algae cultivated in water based liquid. With few experiments and research we found out the requirements for them to grow.

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28.04.2023, 29.04.2023 - /DNA analysis with molecular biologist Julian Chollet

For this workshop we focused on learning a molecular biology technique called PCR used to repeatedly replicate (amplify) a defined stretch of DNA for which the starting and ending nucleotide sequences are known. It is necessary to prepare samples (plants, flower, fruit, saliva, skin) of substances whose DNA we want to replicate and we do this through a process of mushing and mixing and centrifuging. After the peparation of the samples, we prepare the gel that need to contain them. Once pipeting the samples in the gel we wait for them to give results. Already after half an hour we can understand which samples contain DNA and in which the stretch of DNA is long or short.

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20.05.2023, 21.05.2023 - /Nanopore sequencing with safety engineer Lisa Thalheim

In this workshop the engineer Lisa Thalheim introduced us the way artists made use of this new technology and showed us how to use the nanopore DNA sequencing. A small machine called MiniON that is capable of analyzing in real-time long fragments of DNA and RNA giving immediate access to results. The machine we used contains up to 512 nanopore channels for the sequencing.

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Idea/Sketch