> All you need is a thermocycler, some eppindorfs, a sequencing gel apparatus, some photographic film, and all the raw chemicals.
And brutal amounts of tedious, flawless precision (I have tremendous respect for people who can do this stuff...)
And brutal amounts of tedious, flawless precision (I have tremendous respect for people who can do this stuff...)
Seriously, though, my wife used to work with alternative RNA bases. Localizing them to specific sequences required the most massive sequencing gels I've seen (at least 1m tall), and every surface in the lab had to be continually rinsed with dilute acid. It turns out, human skin contains bucket-loads of non-specific RNAses. Not a problem for most people who work with DNA, but can absolutely ruin a week or more's worth of work if you're in an RNA lab.
That's why you have to be so careful: life tries very hard to keep the wrong RNAs out.