Boring to Glowing: Learn to transform bacteria

You're going to make bacteria glow in the dark.

Using a gene borrowed from a glowing jellyfish, you'll engineer ordinary E. coli to light up bright green, all with your own hands.
The technique is called genetic transformation: adding new DNA to a living cell to give it a brand-new ability. It's one of the foundations of modern biotech, behind everything from how we make medicines to how scientists study what genes do. In this class you'll learn how it actually works: what happens when bacteria take up new DNA, the conditions that make it succeed, and why some attempts fail.

Then you'll do it yourself. You'll perform the transformation, spread your bacteria on plates, and leave them to grow. (Bacteria take their time, so the glow appears over the next day or two. We'll send you photos of your colonies once they develop, and you're welcome back to the space anytime to see them in person.)

By the end of the hour, you'll know how to perform a genetic transformation, and you'll walk away with a certificate of completion.
No biology background needed. This is the third class in our four-part Introduction to Biohacking series, but each one stands on its own, so this is a perfectly good place to start.