Human DNA Extraction Lab Conclusion

In the lab on Wednesday, we were testing how DNA can be separated from cheek cells. We found that it is possible with several steps and patience. First, we took tiny pieces of the cheek cells inside our mouth using gatorade. We added drops of detergent, a pinch of salt, and a few drops of pineapple juice. We then transferred it to a tube and inverted it around 6 times. After that, we added alcohol to the solution in order to get the DNA, which was unraveled and clumped up together in plain sight, and had it float up, due to the contact between the non-polar alcohol and the polar gatorade mixture. The reason why this process worked was the importance of the materials we used. Detergent can allow homogeneization inside the solution, removing most of the cell. The salt helps easily clump all the DNA together, while the soap can lyse the cell, which dissolves it and lets the loose DNA out. The pineapple juice lets us further unravel the DNA by removing the histones that hold it together in a double helix. Finally, when we added the alcohol, the polar DNA would float into the alcohol as precipitate in between the solution and alcohol.

Even the best can make mistakes during experiments! Some mistakes that I could have made would be mistaking the DNA for something else. When the precipitate came out, it was the same thing as the ones that were floating around in the solution before adding everything else. This shows that I may have thought that the big clump of red stuff in the picture below the post may have been just been my cheek cells. Another mistake that I could have done was the order of the procedure. Before we began, we were only given a mixed-up order of the procedure, and were asked to unscramble them and see if it was right. My group could have done one wrong step and never realized it, because we were never told after and during the experiment if we did it right or not. My only recommendation is that we could do a little more by having an example to refer to after the experiment, so that we could see if the results we got were the same as the reference.

The purpose of this lab is to explore the DNA and how to extract it. This lab is a hands-on test on what DNA is, and its shape, which demonstrates the big points in the Unit: Walking the Dogma.
This lab could be used in other ways, such as further exploration of the DNA or finding certain things in the subjects DNA that could seem interesting, or just a plain old picture, like the one below!