This assignment prompted us to to discuss with our groupmate(s):

At any point during the COVID-19 pandemic, did you or anyone you know work with a contact tracer? If so, what information was provided to them?

Describe the importance of contact tracers at the start of an epidemic.

How do contact tracers play a key role in interrupting chains of transmission of disease?

Sue is a regular student who caught a disease. This assignment is supposed to help understand how we can analyze or explain the spread of that disease towards her peers or friends.

Glow: I did well on trying my best to compare with my group members. This was a partner assignment, so I had to make sure that I contributed well enough.

Grow: I could work on improving my flow-chart. The arrows are a bit too confusing. There were also so many other things I could have added like additional background information. I also could have chosen a better color scheme for better visualization of the words.

The task of this assignment was to make a presentation and share our recordings. We were previously given a case study that included many patients of many numbers that correlate with a backstory while our job is to try to come up with a diagnosis for our chosen patient. We chose patient 8. We learned that the Labyrinth is located in the inner ear as a complex structure providing both hearing and balance. This part of the ear contains the cochlea (for hearing) and the vestibular system (for balance). We believed that patient 8 dealt with labyrinthitis. This because it embraces moderate sensorineural loss in the left ear at low frequencies and mild sensorineural hearing loss in the left ear at medium frequencies, along with mild sensorineural hearing loss in the right ear.

Glow: I did well on trying my best to compare with my group members. This was a partner assignment, so I had to make sure that I contributed well enough.

Grow: I could work on improving my presentation skills. I always make it my goal to not glance at the slides behind too much or too long.

The task of the assignment was to . . . . .

1. Scan a plasmid DNA and locate the restriction sites for each enzyme. These sites have been shaded in or colored for you. Identify the enzyme that would target each designated site and create a color key in my laboratory notebook.

2. Scan the viral DNA and locate restriction sites for each enzyme. Using the same color key you previously designated, shade each restriction site with the appropriate color using colored pencils.

3. Scan the plasmid DNA as well as the gene from the hepatitis B virus to find an appropriate enzyme to engineer the plasmid. Your goal is to open the plasmid ring and insert a piece of the viral gene. Follow the guidelines listed below to determine the most efficient enzyme to complete your task.

4. Use an appropriate restriction enzyme to open the plasmid ring as well as cut out a piece of the viral gene. You do not want to use an enzyme that digests the plasmid into many tiny pieces, and you want to digest the sequence with an enzyme that produces sticky ends.

5. Do not cleave more than twenty base pairs off either side of the viral DNA. The remaining base pairs are required for production of the protein of interest.  Important promoters at the beginning of the sequence are vital to transcribing the genetic code.

6. We chose an enzyme that does not interrupt the antibiotic resistance gene in the plasmid or the origin of replication (ori), the sequence that initiates replication of the plasmid. The antibiotic resistance gene provides scientists with a way of determining if an engineered plasmid successfully made it into a target cell. If bacterial cells that were not antibiotic resistant now grow on medium with antibiotics present, they must contain the new plasmid.

7. Make sure we created sticky ends on both the plasmid and the viral DNA.

8. Finally, after the teacher approves, we used scissors and tape to create your recombinant plasmid. We were sure to make your cuts according to the pattern shown on the restriction enzyme table.

Glow: I did well on trying my best to compare with my group members. This was a partner assignment, so I had to make sure that I contributed well enough.

Grow: I could work on explaining my problems to a peer better than to directly ask a teacher for help.