Strawberry Lab and DNA Model

        Recently I had a very fun week in science. We started to learn about DNA and its jobs in a cell. To start off the unit we got to do a lab. In this lab our job was to get the DNA from a strawberry. To do this we had to follow a few steps. The first step was to place the starwberry in a plastic bag then add 5ml of dish soap, 2.5ml of salt, and 25ml of water. The best part of the lab was after everything was in the bag we got to crush it. Once it was completely crushed we poured it into a test tube until it was half full. We then added 10ml of  ice cold ethanol in the test tube. We waited about 5 mins and all of the DNA from the strawberry rose to the top of the test tube. It looked very strange and I kinda wanted to eat it. Once it was all at the top we pulled it out with a bent paperclip and put it on a slide and looked at it under a microscope. It looked a lot different than I excpectex but it still looked cool. This was probably my favourite lab I’ve done this year.  

A few classes later we got to make a model of DNA. We first learned what DNA looks like and how it is a twisted ladder. We learned what the ladder is made of and what connects the sides. For example DNA has four letters A,C,G, and T. An A must connect to a T and a G must connect to a C. We were given many materials such as pipe cleaners, straws, beads, pompoms, amd macoroni to make the DNA out of. My group made a DNA molecule out of pipe cleaners and beads and it turned out really well.  The pink flowers represent C. The orange flowers represent G. The blue beads represent T and the pink stars represent A. It was a very fun project.