Although, nothing can replace hands on experience in an actual laboratory, if you don’t have a “wet lab” background and you don’t have a chance to at least visit an actual lab in real life, you can still get a feeling for how things work by taking a look at a virtual laboratory. Of course, in real life everything is much messier, more boring , more tiresome and takes much-much more time. In my experience, Murphy’s law “frequents” labs more than any other place in the whole universe, so everything that can possibly go wrong will actually go wrong at some point. Still, if you want to completely understand a technique or protocol, it helps a lot to go through it step-by-step, even if you just do it virtually.
So here is a list of a few virtual lab exercises:
- DNA extraction
- PCR
- Gel electrophoresis: 1, 2
- DNA Microarray
- Bacterial transformation
- Mouse cloning
- DNA Fingerprinting
- Can Cancer Tumors Be Starved to Death? – Virtual experiment
- Genetic counseling
Feel free to add more in the comment section!
