Mastery of current DNA technology requires familiarity with a small number of basic
concepts and techniques. The goal of this chapter is to present this information
concisely, yet in enough detail to be useful when a procedure goes wrong. Section I is
devoted to Escherichia coli. Recipes are provided for media that support E. coli growth,
as well as instructions for making the simple tools needed to work with bacterial cells.
Growth of E. coli in liquid and solid media is then detailed. The final unit in Section I
describes a few detailed aspects of E. coli biology learned from classical bacterial genetic
studies, the understanding of which is especially relevant to the techniques used in modern
DNA work.