science experiment?

Question

My son has a science experiment, he chose to extract DNA from veggies, but is having a difficult time trying to think of the "question" for his project? He doesnt simply want to do "how to extract DNA" but wants to have more to it, like with a variety of veggies or fruits or whatever he can extract DNA from.

Answer 1

Hmm. This is a tricky experiment to get quantitative data from. Small differences in the extraction procedure could give very different results. I like Worker Ant's ideas though. In addition to those, maybe he could extract DNA from different parts of the plants (he would have to get a whole plant).

Do different parts of the plant have different amounts of DNA (i.e. the base of the stalk vs the end of the stalk vs the leaves vs the fruit)? The individual parts would need to be weighed very carefully prior to extraction. The DNA would also have to be measured and normalized to the weight of the original sample (divide the amount of DNA by the weight of the sample to get DNA per gram).

Differences in DNA content would probably be due to either a higher density of cells (lots of small cells rather than a few big ones, since each cell should have an identical amount of DNA, regardless of size) or due to lots of mitosis (a mitotic cell, in the right phase, should contain twice the amount of DNA as a normal cell). Both of these could be verified by looking at a very thin slice of the plant under a microscope (maybe his teacher could help him out with that part).

Answer 2

Which fruits or veggies are the easiest to extract DNA from? What causes this? Is there a difference in extracting from fruits or veggies?

Answer 3

If you are watching for a "school-stage" scan, I'd say the simplest on could be the presentation of the Law of Diffusion by way of hanging Potassium Permanganate on a petri dish given that this legislation applies on each detail on technological know-how. Whether or not it's biology or common technological know-how. Or should you desire to contain the "eminent hazard" on safeguard within the nation, you would check out displaying how realistic it's for individuals to create residence-made explosives and different instruments making use of ordinary family components.