In this day and age when it is so fashionable to talk about laboratories and DNA I want to show you how to do a simple experiment that we can do at home with the little ones, extracting DNA at home.
And the fact is that extracting DNA from our cells is a very simple simple home experiment in which we do not need very expensive or complex to find materials, such as soap dishwashing, salt, alcohol and water.
The steps to be taken to carry out our extraction are as follows:
Obtaining our genetic material
First of all we have to take a normal beaker which we fill with water halfway and a small spoonful of salt We then gargle with this amount of water for about 30-40 seconds vigorously and return it to the glass, we have our sample, now it’s time to take the DNA out of our cells ;(.
DNA release
To the anterior vessel add a few drops of soap dishwashing and stir very slowly with a spoon or chopstick, the soap dishwashing will cause the membranes of our cells to rupture. and all the contents inside are released, including our DNA. This is due to the soap’s ability to break the surface tension of water.
Making DNA visible
To be able to see our DNA strands we pour in alcohol in a glass, and pour it over the otherin which we have our DNA, carefully so that they are formed. two layersthe lower one which contains our DNA sample and the upper one which is the alcohol.
We let it sit for a few minutes and in the top layer of alcohol will start to show some white strands, ¡That’s our DNAThis is possible because the DNA is insoluble in alcohol so it tends to crystallise and become visible.
Collection
With a toothpick we can try to collect all the genetic material that we have been able to solubilise and if we have a small vial or eppendorf tube we can fill it with alcohol and put our DNA in it.
This experiment can be done with any type of cells, we can also try it with strawberries or grapes, which will also have different coloured strands. We hope you have learned how to extract DNA at home!
Also find out what temperature the water in the oceans is at here.