Table 1.

Topics taught in each lab.

Lab	Lab topic	Description
1	Bacterial growth	Spectrophotometer is used to determine the turbidity and therefore concentration of batch-cultured E. coli at specific time points followed by formulation and interpretation of bacterial growth curve.
2	Bacterial transformation	E. coli are made competent using CaCl2 and heat shock technique and transformed using a recombinant plasmid. Cells are then cultured on agar plates to verify transformation using antibiotic resistance imparted by the plasmid.
3	DNA isolation and Purification	Transformed E. coli are used to isolate plasmid using an alkaline lysis assay and the plasmid concentration and purity is determined by performing gel electrophoresis.
4	Restriction Digestion	The isolated plasmid is subjected to restriction digestion using 2 separate restriction endonucleases or their combination. Gel electrophoresis is performed to assess the properties of digested and undigested plasmids.
5	Protein Quantification	A Bicinchoninic acid (BCA) assay and UV absorbance method is employed to determine the concentration of unknown proteins.
6	Protein purification	Affinity chromatography is used to purify and elute proteins isolated from bacterial cell culture.
7	Protein Concentration	Centrifugal filtration method is used to concentrate the isolated proteins from lab 6 which are then quantified using BCA assay.
8	SDS-PAGE	The concentrated samples from Lab 7 are separated using Sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) and assessed.