Question:
What does strawberry DNA look like?
Materials:
- Beakers
- Water
- Laundry detergent
- Salt
- Strawberries
- Zip-lock bags
- Coffee filters
- Spoons
- Isopropyl alcohol (chilled)
- Tweezers
Instructions:
- Measure 90 mL of water into a beaker or similar container.
- Pour 10 mL of laundry detergent into the 90 mL of water.
- Add 1/4 tsp of salt to the liquid in the beaker.
- Mix it all up.
- Place one strawberry in a plastic zipper-lock bag.
- Pour the extraction solution into the bag with the strawberry.
- Remove as much air from the bag as possible and seal it.
- Mash, smash, and mush the strawberry inside of the bag until there are no large pieces remaining.
- Pour the resulting strawberry and extraction solution mixture through a coffee filter and into a beaker or similar container.
- Use a spoon to press the strained bits of strawberry against the filter, forcing even more of the solution into the beaker.
- Transfer the solution into a smaller beak or similar container that holds around 50-100 mL of fluid.
- Add 5 mL of chilled isopropyl alcohol to the solution and hold the mixture at eye level.
- Gently remove the DNA, the white precipitate, from the solution using tweezers.