S-STEM Scholar Jaime Carreon's Blog

  Extracting DNA from fruits 🍌🍓🥝 Materials Dish liquid soap 10 ml Water 110 ml Alcohol 20 ml Half teaspoon of salt Stainer Tweezers   3 measurement cups Ziploc bags  Ice Banana* Strawberry* Kiwi* Reagents and samples Banana* Strawberry* Kiwi* Dish soap  Water Alcohol  Salt Procedure Prepare the lysis solution : Mix the water, the dish soap and the salt. I prepared the same amount of solution to use on kiwi, strawberry, and banana. Mash the fruit in a Ziploc bag with the lysis solution. Mash very well to release the greatest amount of DNA from the cells. Filter the mix, this liquid contains the DNA dissolved in it. Precipitate the DNA! With alcohol. Add alcohol to the mixture and wait for 5 minutes. The alcohol has to be cold; we can put it in the fridge for fifteen minutes or either keep it on ice during the procedure. And finally here it is! That white slime forming in the middle of the alcohol layers is DNA. More DNA can be seen from the banana...

  Homemade  Solid Culture Media  Away from the laboratory, I was curious to create agar plates with ingredients that we can find in our kitchen.  Ingredients 2g Table Salt (NaCI) 300 ml of boiling water 1.5g Yeast extract paste 6.25g Gelatine Sterile Plastic Petri Dishes Procedure  First, mix the table salt with the water. Allow the table salt to melt to create a solution.  Second, add the yeast extract to the solution. Mix it until it is dissolved.  Third, add the gelatine to the solution. Mix it until the lumps disappear. Plate      Pour the solution into the dishes very carefully to avoid bubbling. From the solution, 15 plates of 20 grams each are obtained. Conclusion To conclude, with these procedures agar plates can be created at home. It does not mean that these culture media can sustain bacteria such as E.coli and D. radiodurans. I haven't put them into practice yet, but I'm excited to see if I can get bacteria growth on these hom...