Microbe Maker
Discover how DNA can provide clues to how microbes work and whether they are ‘good’ or ‘bad’.
Can you decode some microbial DNA and make your own microbe? This activity demonstrates how DNA variation can affect how a microbe looks, lives and works. Using a DNA key you can work out what features a microbe would have had based on a simplified DNA sequence profile.
DNA is a small molecule inside living things that acts as the instructions to make all humans the way they are. This information is encoded in four bases? (adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine). Differences in the sequence of these bases (A, T, C and G) provide different instructions, which can give microbes different features and even determine if they are good microbes (helping keep us healthy or making us products like food) or bad microbes (possibly making us ill).