The write-up for the pGlo lab should be a useful summary of the lab that shows your grasp of the concepts
of plasmids, recombinant DNA molecules, transformation, genes, protein synthesis and gene regulation in
prokaryotic cells. The lab report does NOT need to be organized into an Introduction, Hypothesis, Methods,
Results and Conclusion section. Here is a suggested approach, but others would work well if they also
created a summary of the lab that demonstrated your understanding of the ideas, terminology and concepts
at work in the lab. You donʼt have to address ALL of the ideas below to create a strong lab report, but the
prompts below will help you create a reasonably detailed discussion of the lab and its results.
Title:
Introduction:
What is phenotype? What was the phenotype of the bacteria that we started with on the plates? What did
we put into the pGLO+ tube and what did we put into the pGLO- tube? What is a plasmid? What are the
genes that are relevant on the pGLO plasmid? How does the regulatory region and coding region for the
gene that produces arabinose digesting enzyme work in a typical, normal, unengineered E coli bacteria?
How was the gene for producing arabinose digesting enzymes altered on the pGLO plasmids?
Methods:
What is transformation? Which tube had the chance for transformation to occur? Which tube was
transformation impossible in? What did we do to the bacteria that made transformation more likely? What is
the adaptive value of transformation in bacteria? Why has transformation evolved? When we put the
bacteria on the plates and incubated them for 24 hours at 37 degrees C, what was the significance of this
temperature. Why was it important that the bacteria be spread on Luria Broth agar and not just regular agar.
What was so important about Luria Broth? What reactions were taking place on the plates during the 24
hour incubation period. How could ampicillin affect the reactions that were taking place on the plates?
Results:
Make a sketch showing the differences in the bacterial growth on the 4 plates at the end of the 24 hour
incubation period.
Conclusion and Discussion.
Why did we get the results that we did. How did the presence/absence of arabinose affect the phenotype of
the colonies? How did arabinose have this effect? Why did bacteria evolve this response to arabinose?
What did we learn from the positive control pate and how are the results from the positive control useful for
understanding why the 2 gGLO+ tubes had scattered colonies? What did we learn from the negative control
plate and how are the results from the negative control useful for understanding why the 2 gGLO+ tubes
had scattered colonies?