In my biology, as a continuation of our intoduction to DNA, we performed a DNA extraction lab. We used the following ingredients in the extraction lab: Wheat, water, detergent, alcohol. We made a sort of "what germ soup" at the bottom of the test tube, it is a mixture of wheat and water. As you can see from the photographs, this soup is milky looking with the wheat settling at the bottom. After mixing the wheat and water, we added the detergent. The detergent turned the mixture a more yellow color and the solution looked a lot thicker than before adding the detergent. The detergent separates all the oils out of the wheat, this includes the DNA. After we added the detergent, we then also added 14ml of alcohol, we did not mix at all once we added the alcohol. This caused a DNA precipitate to form, below is a photograph of this precipitate, it is the white top layer.
After waiting about 10-15 minutes, the DNA began to float to the top of the alcohol. You can see this occuring in the photograph below:
The DNA that you are seeing in the test tube is from the wheat of coarse, the DNA is only made visible by the alcohol added, however, the detergent is what ultimately separated the DNA out of the wheat in the first place. The DNA is interesting, it looks like white fibers floating as you can see.
This lab is a great introduction to simple DNA extraction.
