Biologist Proposes To His Girlfriend With DNA Fragments

There are a lot of proposal stories out there ranging from heartwarming to super geeky. This one falls more on the super geeky side. One biologist, who is only identified by his username of gdiguy2, proposed to his biologist girlfriend by using a polymerase chain reaction to give her a huge surprise when she imaged his electrophoresis gel. The word “Will You Marry Me” appeared on the test.

The proposal made its may to reddit where the kooky biologist explained how he did it. He said:

They’re 5 sized PCR fragments (roughly 150, 300, 500, 700, 1kb), I went back through my notes to find 5 primer pairs that I knew worked pretty well (so don’t feel bad, they’re selected out of primers that had been pre-validated =p). The other lanes are just mixes of the 5 sizes (either 2:3:4 or 4:6 volume mixes going in decreasing size, since larger fragments tend to be brighter). The gel actually didn’t take that long (though it was terrifying loading it), but I made a mockup in Illustrator beforehand (along with a ladder to test what sizes to use), and then sketched it out beforehand so I knew what to add to each lane.

The man also explained that the DNA fragments were only the first step in his proposal. He actually got down on one knee and proposed orally with a bouquet of flowers and chocolates instead of pretreated DNA fragments in a gel.

The biologist also sais that he preferred his manner of proposing as opposed to one of his biologist friends who had suggested he propose to his mouse geneticist girlfriend by sewing the ring into a dead mouse and asking her to dissect it.

Does this proposal rank as the geekiest you have ever heard?