Strawberry DNA Extraction

Put strawberries and a plastic bag. We used about three good-sized ones.

Add a teaspoon or so of water and mushed up the strawberries.

Carefully pour only the liquid of the strawberries into a test tube. Try to avoid clumps of strawberries. I have my test tubes packed, so I used a clean spice jar.

Add 1/4 teaspoon of dish washing soap. Stir it up with a wooden skewer or just shake the tube around a little to mix together.

Very carefully add ice cold rubbing alcohol (from the refrigerator) to the test tube. You want the alcohol to remain on top of the strawberry juice.

Now just watch and see something amazing happen in just minutes.

We have DNA! The little white strands are what you are looking for.

The Science Behind It

In higher organisms like plants and animals, DNA is stored in a compartment called a nucleus where the long, string-like DNA is tightly coiled. To separate DNA from the organism that contains it, you have to break the cells apart (lysis), filter out the big pieces of cell parts and collect the remaining liquid, or supernatent, and add chemicals like salt and alcohol to separate (precipitate) the DNA from the rest of the supernatent.