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Objective:: Read The Directions Carefully

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75 views2 pages

Objective:: Read The Directions Carefully

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api-711049973
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Strawberry DNA – Food Science

Objective: Today, you will be observing what DNA looks like to the naked eye. The goal of this
lab is for you to understand that DNA is in all foods that we eat.

In this lab, you extract and isolate DNA from strawberries using simple, household
ingredients.

You’ve probably learned or heard about DNA, but have you ever seen it? With the

Strawberry DNA experiment, you’ll extract, isolate, and observe the DNA of a strawberry

in a matter of minutes. It sounds impossible, but thanks to special characteristics of

strawberries, it’s actually very possible… and simple. You don’t have to be a geneticist

and you don’t need an electron microscope. It’s easy, fun, and all you need are some

household materials.

The long thick fibers you pull out of the extraction mixture are real strands of strawberry

DNA. As you may know, DNA is present in every cell of all plants and animals and

determines all genetic traits of the individual organism. While other fruits are soft and

just as easy to pulverize, strawberries are the perfect choice for a DNA extraction lab for

two very good reasons: (1) they yield way more DNA than other fruits, and (2) they are

octoploid, meaning that they have eight copies of each type of DNA chromosome.

(Human cells are generally diploid, meaning two sets of chromosomes.) These special

circumstances make strawberry DNA both easy to extract and to see. To extract the

DNA, each component of the extraction mixture plays a part. Soap helps to dissolve cell

membranes. Salt is added to release the DNA strands by breaking up protein chains

that hold nucleic acids together. Finally, DNA is not soluble in isopropyl alcohol,

especially when the alcohol is ice cold.

Read the directions carefully.


1. Using the mortar and pestle, grind up a strawberry. Place the ground up
strawberry into a beaker.

2. Using the graduated cylinder, obtain 10 mL of the chilled Tide buffer


solution. Add this to the ground up strawberry.

3. Stir it vigorously for 2 minutes with the wooden stick. This step is crucial so
make sure you mix it for a full 2 minutes.

4. Place the coffee filter into the other empty beaker. Rinse your wooden
stick off to use later.

5. Carefully pour the strawberry mixture into the coffee filter. You will let the
mixture sit about 10 minutes until most/all of the liquid has been filtered
into the beaker. This will work best if your filter is “hanging” from the top of
the beaker (so the liquid can drip down) and not sitting at the bottom.

6. Throw away the coffee filter and any strawberry material left in it. The
beaker now contains the DNA. Pour the strawberry DNA contents into the
test tube.

7. Rinse your graduated cylinder and obtain 5 mL of alcohol.

8. In this step, you want to gently pour the alcohol into the test tube so it forms
a layer on top of the strawberry contents. To do this, place your wooden
stick in the test tube and slowly pour the alcohol in so it runs down the
wooden stick.

9. Wait patiently for 10 minutes as the DNA collects in the layer between the
strawberry contents and the alcohol.

10. After the 10 minutes are up, gently swirl the wooden stick in the layer in
between to collect the DNA sample.

11. Show me your DNA sample.

12. Clean all lab equipment, wipe down your lab station, and check with me
before returning to your seats.

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