DNA Extraction at Home??

For an extra credit assignment, Jennifer Parascandolo, Bharathi Chinnakotla and I extracted DNA out of strawberries!

Check out our video below:

Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid (DNA) is the factor that encodes for genetic information for all living things. Our extra credit assignment required us to extract the DNA out of strawberries using household ingredients. Strawberries, unlike many other berries have eight copies of DNA, making them octoploids. This trait makes strawberries one of the easiest living organisms to extract DNA from.

This experiment included the use of soap, salt and isopropyl alcohol. At first I was not sure what purpose these ingredients stood for. I later found out that soap was used to dissolve the nuclear membrane and the cells. The salt helped break down the protein chains, while the alcohol was used to make the DNA more visible. DNA is more visible in isopropyl alcohol because DNA is not soluble in the alcohol.

This assignment was a lot of fun and was very interesting. I learned that you do not have to be a geneticist to extract DNA and you also do not have to be in a lab to do so. If I was given a “redo” on this project, my group and I would try and use better measuring tools to measure out the ingredients. We did not have the proper cups and spoons that the demo had told us to use. Other than that, I would also want to try this same experiment with other fruits and see if the experiment works!

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Works Cited

Strawberry DNA – Sick Science! #114. Youtube. Youtube, 12 Nov. 2012. Web. 16 Nov. 2014.

“Squishy Science: Extract DNA from Smashed Strawberries.” Scientific American Global RSS. Science Buddies, n.d. Web. 16 Nov. 2014.