Friday, February 29, 2008

DNA - UPDATE - ANALYZING!

This is a picture of my great grandmother Stella, and my grandmother Ruth, sitting on my great grandpa Fred's knee.

The DNA I'm testing for is the MITOCHONDRIAL strain, showing my deep ancestral roots of the female line. The SAME DNA has been carried by my ancient grandmother's for centuries, passed down to my mother, myself, my sisters and our daughters after us.
The backdrop of this picture is an actual microscope image showing the liquid-crystal phase of DNA molecules. The DNA molecules pair to form DNA double helices, which, in turn, stack end-to-end to make rod-shaped aggregates that orient parallel to one another.

My DNA is now in the analyzing stage! Last night I checked the website and it said it was still in isolation, but this morning it's now listed for analyzing. This means the NEXT stage is QUALITY CONTROL!

Once we hit the quality control, ANY DAY after that when I check the website, I will no longer see the STAGE section, but rather I will click a bar and enter the RESULTS - I will immediately see my HAPLOGROUP and the migration map.

Here's the stage for ANALIZATION - as stated on the National Geographic website:

DNA ANALYSIS AND QUALITY CONTROL
The samples are transferred into PCR amplification plates for testing using a robotic liquid handling station. The appropriate chemicals are added to the samples to amplify the targeted regions of the DNA for testing. The samples are heated and cooled in a thermal cycler in order to run the PCR amplification. The PCR amplification products are loaded into the capillary electrophoresis machine and the products are sorted by size and color.
A laboratory staff member uses a computer program to assign scores to the samples. The computer generated scores are then reviewed by two additional laboratory staff members to produce finalized data.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sounds like we're about to give birth :)

Anonymous said...

Well, I just hope the contractions don't last FOREVER! ;-)