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Strawberry DNA extraction is a fun experiment that you can easily do using
every day materials.
You'll need one strawberry,
one ziploc bag, two small beakers, a plastic funnel,
one square of cheese cloth, a tube rack
one 50 mL plastic tube, 5 mL of alcohol, a pipette,
one small tube with a cap or a lid, and 20 mL of extraction solution.
The extraction solution is made by mixing 900 mL of water
with 100 mL of shampoo, and 2 teaspoons of salt.
This will make enough for your whole class.
First place the strawberry into the ziploc bag.
Then pour 20 mL of the extraction solution into the bag.
Close and seal the bag removing as much air as possible.
Use your hands to gently mash the strawberry in the extraction solution
for five minutes.
Place a funnel into the 50 mL tube.
Next, place a piece of cheese cloth inside the funnel. Open your ziploc
bag and pour the mixture of strawberry and extraction solution through the cloth
and into the funnel.
Gently squeeze the cheese cloth.
Once all the liquid has passed through the cloth, throw the cloth away and
remove the funnel.
add 5 mL of 70% isopropyl alcohol.
Hold your tube to eye level and observe. The DNA precipitate looks like fine,
white strands of cotton fiber -
almost like spider webs. Now you can use the pipette to remove the DNA from
the tube.
Look at it, touch it, for place it into another tube to keep.
Now you've successfully extracted the DNA from the strawberry.