Strawberry DNA Extraction Lab

It is unclear where the name "strawberry" came from, but it is commonly

believed that the name resulted from the habit of growing cultivated
berries on a bed of straw. When the berries were harvested they were
often strung on a straw blade and sold that way as a “straw of berries.” The
American Indians called strawberries "wuttahimneash" which means heart-
seed berry. The scientific name Fragaria and the common name, fraise in
many languages, refers to the sweet fragrance of the berries. The strawberry, like many fruits
including apples, pears, raspberries, and cherries are members of the rose family. There is a
LOT of DNA in strawberries! As the matter of fact, after this lab is complete, you will never
be able to eat a strawberry again without thinking of how much DNA is in it!

Lab Expectations:
1. DO NOT EAT the strawberry! You only have one strawberry to use for this lab and you
may NOT eat it!
2. This is a lab that we will do together as a class; therefore you must follow the directions
exactly or the experiment will most likely not work for you and you will be wasting
supplies. In other words, DO NOT do anything until you are instructed to do so.
3. Please sign on the line stating that you have read the directions, understand the
directions, and do not have any questions.

Student Signature: __________________________________

Materials:
Each pair will need the following:
1. Heavy duty zip lock baggie
2. 1 strawberry
3. 10 ml DNA extraction buffer (soapy, salty water)
4. Filtering Apparatus: cheesecloth/coffee filter
5. Clear cup
6. Small paper cup for extraction buffer
7. Black or colored straw
8. Ruler
9. 91% Isopropyl Alcohol

Procedure:
1. Do not dispose of any materials in this lab into the trash. You will be cleaning some of
the materials for other students to use in a period after you today.
2. Place strawberry in Ziploc bag and MAKE sure the bag is completely sealed. Then gently
mash the strawberry until it is completely pulverized. Approximately 10 minutes.
 3. Let your teacher check your strawberry to make sure it is pulverized enough before going
on to the next step.
4. Pour the DNA extraction buffer into the bag of “strawberry mush” and reseal the bag
completely.
5. GENTLY mix the bag sloshing back and forth. Then let sit for about 5 minutes.
6. With your partner’s help, gently pour the strawberry mixture through the filtering
apparatus (cheesecloth/coffee filter) into the clear cup.
7. At this point we will be working with 91% isopropyl alcohol. When instructed, you will
GENTLY pour the alcohol down the side of the clear cup to form a layer of alcohol on top
of the strawberry juice that is about 1 ½ cm thick. Alcohol is less dense than the
strawberry juice, so it will float on top.
8. You should immediately see clumps of white stringy stuff where the strawberry and
alcohol layers meet. This long string stuff is DNA!!!

9. Use the black straw to pull the DNA up and you can wind it onto the straw.
10. Look at part of the DNA under a microscope.

Draw what you see in the box.

Thought Questions:

1. Why do you think that soap is used

in this procedure?

2. What did the DNA look like? Relate its chemical structure to how it looks when lots of it
is clumped together.
3. DNA is soluble in water, but not in ethanol. What does this fact have to do with our
method of extraction? Explain what happened when the ethanol came in contact with the
strawberry extract.

4. A person cannot see a single cotton thread 100 feet away, but if you wound thousands of
threads together into a rope, it would be visible at some distance. How is this statement
an analogy to our DNA extraction?

5. In order to study our genes, scientists must first extract the DNA from human tissue.
Would you expect the method of DNA extraction to be the same for Human DNA? Why
or why not?

6. Would the DNA be the same in any cell in the human body?

7. If you wanted to extract DNA from a living person, what cells would you use and why?

8. List two reasons why a scientist might want to study the DNA of strawberries.