In parasitology, we learned about vectors that allow different species of parasites to be bred inside of them or pass them along to the next host. A vector is a subject that continues the circle of life even if it is not suitable for the species in that specific moment. If I had to guess what cloning using bacterial vectors means, I would guess that bacteria are the vessels in which cloning takes place. Maybe their internal environment supports the cloning material of interest. Maybe it is DNA that can only survive within a host or need the bacteria’s specific machinery to make a copy of first. Since the first experiment dealt with gel electrophoresis, maybe we will be cloning bacterial DNA. This would be of interest because it isolates the bacteria’s DNA where we could then manipulate it to whatever purpose we need. It would remove the danger of getting infected by our species of interest. When using CRISPR technology, we rearrange the order of nucleobases to encode for a differing function than the original function.
Scientists regularly manipulate the genetic code of their subjects of interest in order to understand them better. Maybe the world doesn’t know a specific mechanism of how their metabolism works or how they can enter in a cell. If you tweak a gene that interferes with a specific step of their metabolism, then you would be able to determine how that gene is linked to that step. In virology we learned that scientists tweak viral DNA by either inserting or removing a gene to gain information on transmissibility or another related function. This helps us create drugs that interfere with the way they transmit to another person and hopefully prevent that from happening.
