Pre-Practical session in Cell and Molecular Biology

The Pre-Practical session was conducted today for a group of around 150 students in a Lecture Theatre (LT) between 17:00 to 18:00 by Prof. Trevor Beebee. He had come with the copies of the manual for the practical to be conducted after two days and had placed them on the table. Students collected these copies as soon as they entered the LT. This practical is based on the two lectures delivered by him last week on Nucleic Acids.

The session was on Nucleic Acids: ‘ DNA Isolation and Partial Characterisation from Bacterial cells’. The instructions in the manual says that the students are expected to read these carefully before they come for the practicals. This will help them to understand better and enable them to work faster. This practical session is going to be 3 hours on Thursday either 9:00 -12:00 or 14:00 to 17:00 in four groups depending on the degree programme. The students will work in pairs.

The three hours practical is divided in to three Parts:

Part I: How to isolate and purify DNA from Bacteria (1½ hours)...first half of the practical.

Part II: Investigate the size of the DNA and RNA ,and

PartIII: Estimate yield and purity.

The Solutions, apparatus, instruments and procedure required to carry out this practical is given and was explained with the help of power point slides.

After the practical (i.e. at home) the students are expected to draw  graph, calculate the yield and concentration.

After this the students should look at the questions at the end of the schedule. Once they are ready with the answers then should log on to ‘Study Direct and complete’- the on-line quiz.

At the end of this practical the students should be able to:

1. Understand how to isolate and purify DNA from Bacteria.
2. Investigate the size of DNA and measure how much RNA is present.
3. Know how to estimate yield and purity of DNA.

From this pre-practical session what I understand is that the aims, objectives, procedure, time management and assessment are clearly defined and the students will not have any confusion during the practical .