Today my lab group extracted the DNA from two delicious strawberries. Unfortunately, the strawberries didn’t remain delicious for long, but we’ll get to that in a moment. We started with two regular, washed, and dyed strawberries.
First, we
Today my lab group extracted the DNA from two delicious strawberries. Unfortunately, the strawberries didn’t remain delicious for long, but we’ll get to that in a moment. We started with two regular, washed, and dyed strawberries.
First, we created a solution of water, detergent, and salt to mix with the strawberries. We then pipetted 10 mL of this into two plastic bags, each of which was also given a strawberry. We then closed the bags, and pounded them to a mush. The water helped the strawberries form a liquid with a few extra ingredients. The detergent dissolved the cell membranes, and the salt ions help separate out the DNA strands. The result:
As I mentioned, not quite as delicious anymore (we must make certain sacrifices for science). We slowly filtered this mixture through cheesecloth and a funnel, and were given 4 test tubes filled 1/4 with red strawberry goo.
Though we weren’t able to catch much of it with our wooden stick, we were able to observe the DNA in the rubbing alcohol. We even managed to pull a bit of it out on our pipette. And that’s how we extracted some strawberry DNA!