71 
DR. BERG: Well, the ease of doing the experiments depends on what you 
want to achieve. I think if one were to ask can you make a recombinant DNA — 
mixture of recombinant DNA molecules, the answer is that you could probably 
do it in a few minutes if you sent out for the enzymes and got some DNA 
samples and stirred them up, and you could manufacture them. 
The problem of isolating a single gene is a much more complex problem 
and requires a great deal more sophistication, both in the materials that 
you start with, the handling, the fractionation, and eventually identifica- 
tion. 
So there are aspects of it which are simple. The joining together of 
two molecules of DNA is simple. The cloning and isolation of a specific 
gene is exceedingly difficult. 
MR. HUTT: The cloning, at what level could that be done, Dr. Berg, 
when you say exceedingly difficult? Only in the most sophisticated graduate 
schools? 
DR. BERG: I think only in the laboratories which have had a great deal 
of experience in molecular genetics, microbiology, and in the physical 
methods that are needed to characterize — 
DR. MELNICK: But isn't it true that the dangerous experiments can be 
done very easily? 
DR. BERG: It depends on how you define the word dangerous. 
DR. MELNICK: The ones without the knowledge of what the outcome is 
going to be, or portends to be. 
DR. BERG: That is, a shotgun experiment, which is just to mix DNA from 
a primate organism mixed with a potential vector, the cleavage of the two, 
the joining together in random association is exceedingly simple. 
MR. HUTT: It could be done in a high school laboratory? 
DR. BERG: I suspect so. 
DR. MELNICK: And one could not, at this point, define the hazards? 
DR. BERG: Well, the hazard involves introducing it into an organism, 
and that takes a little bit more sophistication, because I think just having 
a test tube full of random recombinants is, by itself, not much more than 
taking two different DNA samples and mixing them up in the test tube in 
the first place. 
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