“Deep Woods PCR” presented by Vanouse

Symposium:

• ISEA2011: 17th International Symposium on Electronic Art
• More presentations from ISEA2011:  

• BioARTCAMP: Laboratory Ecologies in the Wild West

• Deep Woods PCR

• Paul Vanouse

Venue(s):

• Sabanci Center, Istanbul, Turkey

• Panel: BioARTCAMP: Laboratory Ecologies in the Wild West

  Deep Woods PCR is an his­tor­i­cal fic­tion of sci­ence, in which I source pri­mary mol­e­c­u­lar bi­ol­ogy chem­i­cals from the re­mote en­camp­ment. The Banff re­gion is famed for its nat­ural hot springs, which are the habi­tat for bac­te­ria named Ther­mus aquati­cus. This bac­te­ria pro­duces the heat-ac­ti­vated Taq DNA Poly­merase, one of the most im­por­tant en­zymes in mol­e­c­u­lar bi­ol­ogy be­cause of its use in the poly­merase chain re­ac­tion (PCR) DNA am­pli­fi­ca­tion/iden­ti­fi­ca­tion tech­nique.  In this pro­ject, I will har­vest Taq Bac­te­ria from the springs to use in each re­ac­tion and then per­form PCR with­out elec­tric­ity as I will thermo-cy­cle DNA re­ac­tion tubes by phys­i­cally mov­ing from one tem­per­a­ture re­gion of a hot­spring to an­other, and thus in­duce am­pli­fi­ca­tion. While ac­knowl­edg­ing its his­tory in the first great patent war of mol­e­c­u­lar bi­ol­ogy, my retro-pi­o­neer­ing of this PCR iden­ti­fi­ca­tion tech­nique will also hope­fully in­voke mythic nar­ra­tives of (self) dis­cov­ery.

Video:

• DWPCR-short-med-res from Paul Vanouse on Vimeo.

Category:

• Panel