Bacterial Transformation Course by DNA Learning Center 🧬

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory’s DNA Learning Center presents this course as a service to help engage teachers and students in China during the coronavirus school closures.

The bacterial transformation experiment illustrates the direct link between an organism's genetic complement (genotype) and its observable characteristics (phenotype). A gene for antibiotic resistance is introduced into the bacterium E. coli. Following overnight incubation, transformed bacteria are compared to unexposed bacteria for their ability to grow in the presence of ampicillin.