DNA profiling interactive

Choose one of the two problems, or solve them both. You can investigate the DNA of blood and hair samples found at a crime scene to find out if a police suspect was there or not. Or you can look at the blood samples of a group of people to find out who is entitled to a share of a dead man’s estate.

Zoom in to see a skin sample at higher and higher magnification, until you are looking at a cell, its nucleus, and eventually a molecule of DNA - the blueprint of life.
 

Choose the dog you would like as a pet and then work through the process of cloning it, making choices about the source of an egg and a suitable surrogate mother.
 

Work through the steps of extracting a cell and treating the DNA in it and then use a gene probe to find out which of the organism’s chromosomes carries a particular gene. Look for one of two disease-carrying genes in humans, for a pest-resistant gene in the kidney bean, for the ‘yellow-pod’ gene in peas or the ‘white fur’ gene in rats.
 

Gene splicing interactive

Find out how to cut a piece of DNA in a way that will let you paste it into the plasmid of a bacterium - an introduction to the key steps in gene splicing.
 

Work through the key steps in cloning a thylacine - even though it is extinct!