Science & Technology
DIY Blood Typing
Have you ever wondered what your blood type is and what it means genetically? Nearly a third of people in the U.S. don’t know their blood type, and it isn’t tested for unless there’s an emergency or a specific medical reason.
But your blood type matters. It plays an important role in transfusions, pregnancy, organ transplants, and even disease risk.
By exploring small differences in DNA (called single-nucleotide polymorphisms, SNPs), you'll learn how scientists use restriction enzymes to cut DNA at specific sites and discover whether mutations are present. These mutations affect how sugars are added to the surface of your red blood cells, which ultimately defines your blood type!
No prior lab experience is necessary, just curiosity!
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Brendan Camellato (he/him) is a postdoctoral research scholar at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. He was born and raised outside of Ottawa, Canada, and attended the University of Ottawa where he completed a BSc in Biomedical Sciences and an M.Sc. in Cellular and Molecular Medicine. Brendan came to NYC to study at NYU, completing a PhD in Cell Biology. He has experience in cell and molecular biology, synthetic biology, and genome engineering, and has worked with bacteria, yeast, and mammalian cells. He currently works on developing tools for synthetic biology, genome engineering, and molecular recording, and uses them to study developmental and cancer biology. Brendan is very excited about the possibilities that biotechnology can bring to the world, and about helping others better understand these possibilities too. When he’s not engineering biology, Brendan likes to shoot some puck and lay down some groovy beats.
