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Extracting DNA
Extracting DNA
DNA can be extracted from fruits like bananas and kiwis, which is a common experiment that is useful to gain biological information.
Extracting DNA is an extremely important method of gaining information that is useful in several branches of science. Select all of the options below that you think studying DNA can be useful for.
You can select multiple answers
Do you think scientists would extract DNA from plants too?
Extracting DNA from fruit is a common experiment, used to understand the process of DNA extraction. There are many different ways to do this, but let's work through one together. This can be done with many fruits, but let's use a kiwi as an example.
The first step in the process is to peel the kiwi and mash it up. Why do you think we do this?
The next step is to add some washing up liquid and **** a teaspoon of salt to the kiwi. These ingredients have specific functions we don't need to know in detail. In simple terms though, what do you think they do?
Next, the mixture needs to be gradually heated to 60ºC for 5 minutes. Why do you think we do this
Then, we will filter the mixture, and keep what is left in the lower beaker, and discard the filter paper.
This will remove any solid pieces we don't want, and leave a clear(ish) liquid.
Finally, we will then put our filtered mixture on a bath of ice to cool it, and pour chilled ethanol on top of it. This causes the DNA to appear in the mixture. Take a guess at what the ice and ethanol do.
The strands of DNA will then be visible, as a white, stringy, bubbly mixture in the remaining solution. This can be scooped out. Task complete! While we would need more equipment to study it further, this is a great task to do to see DNA for yourself.