Unit 6 Reflection

        Unit 6 was all about the different aspects of biotech, including bioethics, what biotech is used for, and the technologies and equipment that are used in the field of biotech. Biotech involves using microorganisms to benefit humans. Genetic engineering is also a huge part of biotech. There are 4 main applications of biotechnology. For example, one application is agricultural, which would include things like genetically modified crops. Bioethics is also a part of biotechnology. Bioethics is determining what uses of the technology is moral or correct.

      This unit was generally easy for me to understand. The only concept that was slightly more confusing for me was recombinant DNA, but after going through it, I started to grasp the concept more. I think the labs we did this unit were much more successful and clean than the labs that we did last semester.
   

      For this unit, we did two labs in class and a virtual lab online. The virtual lab taught us about the process of gel electrophoresis, which we then did as an actual lab with the candy electrophoresis lab where we separated different candy dyes by size. The other lab we did was the pGLO lab. In this lab we transformed bacteria using a plasmid called pGLO, and we were able to grow bacteria that glowed under a blacklight. From the labs I learned that although the concepts and processes we learned in the vodcast may seem complicated, but they are not very difficult to execute even in a classroom setting.

       I am interested in learning about how the technologies we learned about are being used currently. I also would like to learn about what other technologies exist besides the ones that we learned about during this unit. 

      In my new years goals post I mentioned that I wanted to try and actually understand the topics we learn rather than blindly memorize them. I think I practiced that a lot during this unit, especially when learning about bioethics and having the world cafe discussions in class, as I actually formed opinions for myself, and the labs also really helped me understand the topics.