Extracting Strawberry DNA: Kitchen Science Experiment

Extracting DNA from strawberries is easy due to their high DNA content, using household items and simple steps.

### Extracting DNA from Strawberries: A Fun and Simple Science Experiment
* 🍓 Strawberries are great for DNA extraction as each cell contains **8 copies of the genome**, making it easy to extract a **large amount of DNA**.
* The materials needed for this experiment are household items such as **strawberries, dish detergent, salt, water, rubbing alcohol, and basic kitchen utensils**.
* 🔬 The first step involves **breaking up the strawberries in a plastic bag** to release **individual cells**.
* A solution of detergent, salt, and water is then added to **break open the cell membranes and release the DNA**.
* ☕ The mixture is filtered through a coffee filter to remove cellular debris, leaving behind a liquid containing the **strawberry DNA**.
* ❄ Rubbing alcohol is added to the liquid, causing the DNA to **precipitate out and form a visible white, snot-like substance**.
* The white substance is the **purified strawberry DNA**, which can be collected using a **coffee stirrer**.
* 🎵 The experiment concludes with the scientists jokingly referring to the DNA as "**delicious**" and "**wonderful**", highlighting the **fun and educational nature** of the activity.

[ Music ] If only there was a good way to use genomics to find a good use for all these strawberries. Are you thinking what I'm thinking? [inaudible] Luckily, you only need household items to do that. Otherwise, it would take us forever to set up. But let's get going. [ Background Sounds ] Okay, well, it's super convenient. You had a craving for strawberries. They're really easy to extract DNA from. We'll be experts in strawberry and DNA. Do you know how many copies of the genome that each strawberry cell has? No, how many? Eight. Eight? Eight, 4 times more per cell than humans, so purifying DNA from a strawberry is really easy because it has so much DNA in it. Oh, that's a lot. Yeah. Awesome. It's sure awesome, no time to waste, let's use some science.

So let's just make sure we have
all the materials we need. Yeah, you know, it's always good
to get organized. Agreed. So first, 1 resealable
plastic bag. So I tend to use the small ones, you can use the big ones, but
small ones work really well. You're the experts so I will
listen to that. Okay. Two strawberries. Two strawberries. Very important. Two. And if I remember right,
it's actually very good to take off the green stems and get rid
of those. Correct. Okay. And you can use fresh or frozen.
Two teaspoons of dish detergent. So we have the dish detergent,
put that aside. Okay. And we have a teaspoon for
measuring it. Perfect. Alright, 1 teaspoon of
salt. So here's a teaspoon for
measuring, and here is the salt. Great. Okay, a half cup of
water.

So here we have a measuring cup, half a cup of water. I'll just sit that here. Perfect. Okay, 2 plastic cups. Got those. Got those right here. Okay. One coffee filter. We actually have an extra but yes I have a coffee filter. You never know. Yeah. Might need 2. Half cup of rubbing alcohol, we've got that right here. Yep. Got to be careful with that. One coffee stirrer. And I got 2 just in case we need an extra. Wonderful. There you go. And probably most importantly, 1 scientist or in our case, 2 scientists. Alright. Yes. Okay, so you take the strawberries and what you have to do is to basically break up the strawberries first because then in the next step we're going to break open the cells.

that are in the strawberries to release the DNA. But to sort of help that process along, you really got to unfortunately be a little mean to your strawberries, so you put them in the plastic bag and you seal up the plastic bag, and then you're going to gently just want to start smashing those strawberries as best you can. Now there's lots of techniques that can be used for this. You don't want to get too violent because if you do, you could spray strawberries all over your kitchen table or all over yourself. But at the same time, you have to really work it good as much to get sort of strawberry puree. We just keep getting this to the point that all the big pieces are broken up, and in doing so, you will then have it to a point where you can then go to the next step where

you're going to break open then
individual cells in strawberries, and let the DNA come floating
into solution. Here's the thing, in this bag are smashed up
strawberries with a bunch of individual cells in them. And
maybe one way to think about is like a water balloon, and that's
the cell, and what we need to do is to break open that water
balloon so that the DNA will come floating out. Now, like a water balloon, like you might use
a nail to pop it, but for this, what you do if you're dealing
with a cell, is you use a detergent, like detergent you use
for-- [inaudible]. [inaudible]. So we're going to
make a solution that's going to both have detergent in it, but
it's also going to have other things like salt and water that
make the DNA happy and comfortable floating around
inside of a cell.

[inaudible]. [inaudible], take this, what we
call an extraction liquid, okay? Little concoction sounds
[inaudible]. [inaudible], start you at 2
teaspoons of the detergent. Okay, sounds great. You want
some? No, no, I already had breakfast. Okay, just want to check, looks
good though. Okay, 2 of those, 1
teaspoon of salt. Yeah, maybe you can use a
different teaspoon. Yes, good thing I have 2. Yep. Alright. Perfect. And then remember, we have that
half a cup of water-- Yes, that was poured to the very top. I'm going to meet you halfway. Alright, thank you very much, and
then I'll just pour it in using my skills as a scientist, and
there you go. And now just shake
it up a little. [inaudible] shake.

Yeah, yeah, and all you're really wanting to make sure to do is to make sure the salt gets into solution, and that detergent sort of gets evenly dispersed [inaudible]. Okay. Okay, so that's our extraction liquid. Cool. So now we're basically going to use that detergent like a little pin to pop the water balloons. Use the detergent to break open those strawberry cells. [inaudible] open this up. Let's do it. You can just pour it in. Okay. And there we have it. And so now you seal it. Now here you can't smash, you don't even want to smash because, of course, if you really start smashing then you really spew out the liquid, and that would [inaudible], and actually the other thing is you don't want to be too tough with this because otherwise you'll get a lot of bubbles. But you

just want to sort of work this around just like you're making a smoothie by hand. And so but here's the thing is that while all the DNA is now collecting in the liquid, if you look in there, you have a lot of other stuff that's in the way. Now scientifically, we might refer to that as cellular debris but you know it's just you know strawberry schmutz and you got to get rid of that strawberry schmutz and so that's why we use a coffee filter. It's now time to get rid of this schmutz and get the liquid that'll contain the strawberry DNA, so [inaudible] you can fold that for me. [inaudible]. I'm going to use this as a filter. Now you can use a coffee filter, sometimes you could use gauze if you happen to have some

gauze in your house. You just do whatever it takes to filter out all that schmutzy stuff that was in the strawberries and just let things slowly leak through, seep through like you're making drip coffee. So when most of the liquid has filtered through, what's good is to just remove that filter that contains all that strawberry schmutz and we can just put it on the side, we don't need that anymore. Alright. So this is basically the extraction liquid, which has the insides of all the cells of those strawberries including the DNA. And in order to get the DNA to come out of solution, we do a scientific step which is called precipitation-- [inaudible]. which is basically a way of getting a compound or molecule to sort of come out from being in the liquid state to being in a solid state. To do that, we use this rubbing alcohol--

Alright, which you often want to have it be a little bit cold. And I know this was in the refrigerator, and that's good. You just want to add an equal amount. So what I always do is I just sort of estimate where my finger is as sort of the equal amount, and you can just pour the alcohol up until about that amount. Okay. And a little more [inaudible], that's good. Okay. [inaudible] like that. And then what you want to do is not be overly harsh with this, but you can sort of see there's almost like a layer, the alcohol's a bit on top. [inaudible] The extraction liquid's on the bottom. [inaudible] Just sort of roughly, sort of gently swirl it around. And what you start to see forming sort of between those 2 layers is like a flocculent-like

material sort of almost looks like cotton. Yeah. And as you swirl more and more, and it gets more and more mixed, you'll see more of it forming, and that flocculent material is the DNA. That's awesome. But you know it's very whitish, and it's sort of very viscous, and what does it really look like in real life? It kind of looks like snot. It does look like snot, and so-- And when you start to see big things of snot, then you know it's really working well, and you can even see here as we've done this, you can really start to see some of this precipitated DNA forming. Wow, look at that. And we can get more in a bit, but what you can do is when you start to see it, that's where the coffee stirrer comes in, and you can just sort of fish that out. Look at that, look at that.

That's awesome. That is strawberry DNA, which, again, to our eyes, looks like a bunch of snot. [inaudible]. But in fact, if we could look at it at a molecular level, it would just consist of that classical double helix, that sort of the iconic view of DNA, but this is strawberry-- Purified strawberry DNA. [inaudible] you could get, and you could, if you wanted to, keep swirling, but you can see you've got a tremendous amount there-- [inaudible], which is great. And just imagine, you did all of this using materials that you have in your kitchen, so you can do science in your kitchen and do something that is as wonderful as isolate DNA from a strawberry. That is really cool. DNA extraction. [ Music ] Science is delicious. Especially the DNA. [ Music ]

Strawberry DNA Extraction

NHGRI is the driving force for advancing genomics research at the National Institutes of Health. By conducting and funding world-class genomics research, training the next generation of genomics experts, and collaborating with diverse communities, NHGRI accelerates scientific and medical breakthroughs that improve human health. 

Learn more at https://www.genome.gov.

National Human Genome Research Institute

Extracting DNA from Strawberries: A Household Science Experiment

Strawberries have a high amount of DNA, with each cell containing eight copies of the genome, making the extraction process relatively easy.

The materials needed for the experiment include strawberries, dish detergent, salt, water, rubbing alcohol, and basic household items.

The first steps involve breaking up the strawberries and then the cells to extract the DNA.

Extracting DNA from Strawberries: A Step-by-Step Guide

Smash the strawberries in a sealed plastic bag to create a puree and break open the individual cells.

Create a solution using detergent, salt, and water to make the DNA float out of the cells.

Gently pour the extraction liquid into the bag and shake it to release the DNA from the strawberries.

The extraction liquid, made with salt and detergent, is used to break open the strawberry cells.

Gentle mixing is important to avoid spilling the liquid and creating bubbles.

A coffee filter is then used to separate the DNA-containing liquid from the "strawberry schmutz" before moving on to the next steps.

The first step in extracting DNA from strawberries is to filter the mixture to remove the solid strawberry parts.

After filtering, the next step is to use rubbing alcohol to precipitate the DNA out of the solution.

Gently swirling the alcohol and strawberry mixture will cause the DNA to form a visible, cloudy layer between the two liquids.

Extracting DNA from Strawberries: A Kitchen Science Experiment

DNA extraction from strawberries is a simple and accessible kitchen science experiment, using materials like coffee stirrers and kitchen ingredients.

The extracted DNA from strawberries has a viscous, whitish, and flocculent appearance, often compared to snot.

At a molecular level, the DNA consists of a double helix structure, but to the naked eye, it is a clump of snot-like material.