On Tuesday, Lower Sixth Students took part in an exciting experiment in A Level Biology, extracting DNA from themselves, as well as kiwi fruit, in order to learn basic extraction techniques and gain an understanding of DNA precipitation.
To start, students swirled salt water in their mouths before mixing it with washing liquid in a test tube, then slowly dripping ethanol into the mixture. It was hugely interesting for the students to then watch the DNA precipitation take place, as cotton thread-like structures came into view in their test tubes.
The session helped our A Level Scientists to gain an appreciation of the involvement of DNA in the processes of electrophoresis, sequencing, fingerprinting, cloning and PCR testing!
It was great to see our students using their HPL skills in perseverance, linking their knowledge of genomes and seeing the bigger picture of DNA extraction.
