What aspects of bacteria lent and lend themselves as a usef

Solution

Bacteria has been the favorite organism of molecular biologists for carrying out experiments of recombinant DNA technology, such as cloning, mutations, DNA sequencing etc. There are several aspects of bacteria which make them such an important tool in DNA-based experiments:

Overall safety: Bacteria such as E.coli, B.subtilis and similar other can be cultured easily in the lab using aseptic culturing techniques. With the advent of laminar air flow and HEPA filter, bacteria culturing has become a routine practice in molecular biology laboratories. There are a major number of bacteria known which are not pathogenic to humans, and also bacterial transformation in humans is rare, hence bacteria has been the choice of tool for carrying out safe molecular biology experiments.

Bacterial growth rate: Bacteria has a fast growth rate with generation time as low as 20 minutes in E.coli. Hence it is easy to obtain a huge cell count of bacteria within a short span of time.

Bacterial DNA makeup: Bacteria contain double-stranded circular DNA and there is a presence of extrachromosomal plasmids. These double stranded DNA are small in size comprising of few kilobases. Also these DNA contain unique sites which can cut or modified using restriction enzymes.

DNA replication: Bacteria undergoes semi-conservative mode of replication which is useful for visualizing the replication process using labeled nucleotides.