IMG_0921 [Saving California’s Big Bird]

By
Thalia
– October 16, 2012
The tube pictured here contains the DNA of a California condor that I sexed using polymerase chain reaction. PCR includes breaking open DNA, attaching primers to the DNA, which attach to the target region, and adding polymerase, an enzyme that adds new base pairs throughout the target region. The steps of PCR are repeated until there are a billion copies of the target region.