DNA | Pepper Paints

Our Science Museum, COSI, that recently won best Science Museum award, often sends out a science experiment in the mail. The current exhibit is a CSI crime scene, which we are going to see tonight along with Waterfire. The companion experiment this month is Very Berry DNA.

What you need:

strawberries fresh or frozen

1/8 t salt

1 cup cold water

2 T liquid detergent

toothpick

1 T rubbing alcohol -chilled in the freezer

strainer

2 mason jars

What you do:

1. Place 1 large strawberry, 1/8 t of salt and 1 cup cold water in jar. Smash up strawberry. Shake for 3 minutes.

2. Pour the shaken mixture through a strainer into another mason jar

3. Add 2 T detergent and mix gently. Let solution stand 10 minutes.

4.Tilt the container. Slowly pour 1 T of chilled alcohol down the side so that it forms a layer on top of the strawberry solution. (Be careful not to mix the alcohol and the strawberry solution or the DNA extraction will not work)

5. Let the strawberry/alcohol solution sit for a few minutes. White stringy, filmy stuff that looks like cotton candy will begin to appear where the strawberry solution and alcohol meet. After 5 - 10 minutes, use a toothpick to collect the strands around the toothpick.

Ours weren’t quite big enough to pick out with a toothpick-but you can still see them.

Learn more here!

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7 Comments so far

We did this with wheat at the Maryland Museum of Science and Industry a couple of years ago. It was so cool! Now, if only we could look at the DNA with a microscope. Am wondering if our Canadian OSU professor friend could facilitate this.

that looks pretty cool!

I miss the coal miners thing at COSI The old COSI was so cool, the new one isn’t bad, but they should have kept the coal miners dangit!

I used to be a biology teacher and we did something like this with onions…this is much more fun!

That is amazing, I never would have thought you could see DNA without a microscope. Shows how much science I know! Which is why I’m always on the lookout for fun science activities for Jaylene, and I really appreciate your post. Thanks!

Wow, how awesome, thanks for sharing this!

The kids and I did this with our own DNA. We used our own spit! It worked great! I found the idea in “Explotatopia” a science book from the Exploratorium in San Francisco.

We did the same thing with peas. For our instructions, click here. Oh, by the way, I nominated you for a Brillante Blog award. Go to http://www.exploreacademy.blogspot.com and read the most recent post! Thanks for the great reads!

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