Question: What are the benefits of cloning? Why did you choose this speciality?

David Walker-Sünderhauf answered on 6 Mar 2019:

So I’m doing molecular cloning, which involves changing or copy/pasting DNA sequences in bacteria. (sadly not making clones of animals!) The most basic techniques I’m using are actually really old (restriction enzymes, that always cut DNA at the same sequence, are a staple of molecular cloning and have been used for this since the 1950’s), and altogether it’s really cool to try out new clever methods of manipulating DNA sequences in the lab.
Doing this is really important for carrying out controlled experiments in the lab. For example, if I am competing two bacterial strains to see which one is “fitter”, it will be a lot easier if I genetically engineer one of them to appear blue. Then I can just plate both strains out and count which one is fitter!

I really got into molecular cloning & gene editing during my Masters (which was one long research project), because I find it so cool how many different things you can do with all these molecular tools! It always feels so great to finally get where you wanted to be with a cloning project (although, along the way, often a lot of frustration goes into it).