Smartie Pants

oh dear philip ross. why are you so smart? you baffle me with your words of wisdom

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Surprisingly, the results of the recombinant plasmid sequencing did not concur with this inference. Of the 5 known gene cassette sequences, the only one present in the sequence (See Appendix B) of our recombinant plasmid was that of the catB3 (chloramphenicol) gene cassette. From the results of our plasmid resistance profiling it was expected that the oxa2 (ampicillin resistance) gene cassette was conserved, though it did not show within the region of our recombinant plasmid sequenced. The plated cultures demonstrated clear resistance to ampicillin across the entire plate, thus several hypotheses may be postulated to explain this result:

1) Multiple recombinant plasmids were formed and we incorrectly identified the phenotype of the colony we selected for growth and analysis

2) Further recombination occurred after exposure to the antibiotics, during which the oxa2 gene cassette was lost

3) The oxa2 gene cassette was conserved in the plasmid, but moved by the IntI enzyme to a region outside of that which we could accurately sequence

and....

In our experiment, we demonstrate the ability of the integrons/gene cassette system of gene mobilization. We utilize the plasmid pSU2056 which expresses large amounts of the IntI protein, to catalyse the rearrangement of gene cassettes contained in the pMAQ105 plasmid. pMAQ105 (Figure 1a) is known to contain 5 different gene cassettes as well as an inactive form of the intI gene. The inactive intI gene allows us to exert control and prevent spontaneous recombination from occurring. The phenotypes of the gene cassettes are shown in Figure 1b
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Please do not attempt to read this all at once. It causes overload and a sense of confusion. 

 These are the words of my husband, which I took from his latest lab write-up.

SMARTIE PANTS!