• Question: How does copying and pasting genes help to find out if your heart is beating too slow or too fast?

    Asked by anon-181168 to Laurent on 5 Jun 2018.
    • Photo: Laurent Dupays

      Laurent Dupays answered on 5 Jun 2018:

      The heart is formed of different cell types which are doing different jobs. For example, one type of cells is responsible for the contractions of the heart, another type is responsible to make the heart beats in rhythm.

      Unfortunately, it is difficult to tell them apart as they all look the same. To find the cells which are responsible for the beating, I need to tag them.

      A gene called GFP makes jellyfish glow. I copied that jellyfish gene and pasted it back into a mouse DNA. In a particular place in his set of DNA. By doing that the beating heart cells of the mouse heart now glow under a microscope and I can study them.

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