A Cup of Strawberry DNA Ice Cream

A Cup of Strawberry DNA Ice Cream 

     Strawberries are great.  They're one of my favorite ice cream flavors.  They make great smoothies and are wonderful for DNA extraction.  Recently, we were put to the test of extracting DNA from a strawberry.  First, we created a liquid solution made of detergent, salt, and water and placed a strawberry into it.  Putting the mixture into a Ziploc bag, we proceeded to SMASH the strawberries into a liquid pulp.  Imagine placing a strawberry in a blender, so it would come out mushy and sticky. This would expose the DNA for us to utilize.  Using another solution of alcohol, we were able to extract the DNA from the strawberry.  The alcohol would break apart any bonds between the DNA and the strawberry.  The DNA itself turned out to be rather snot-like.  Despite the yucky appearance, the experiment was entertaining and fascinating at the same time.

Dividing Cells in an Onion Root

Cells in an Onion Root

Seen on the right is an onion root viewed under a microscope. Every single dot in the image is actually a cell.  There are many things that can be noted in this cell.  First, the cell wall, the lines throughout the cell gives it a rigid structure. Upon looking closely, all cells appear different. In fact, each cell is going through mitosis, in which a cell divides into two, or cellular division.  In actuality, this process is more similar to nuclear division as the chromosomes within the nucleus replicate and divide.  There are five main stages to this: Interphase, Prophase, Metaphase, Anaphase, and Telophase. Unfortunately, as the cells were too numerous, we were unable to give an amount of cells in each stage.  However, we could there were very few cells in telophase, telling us that the process was relatively quick. There were many cells in interphase, so going through that stage would take a while. Most people use onion roots when studying mitosis, because it gives a visible image of the cells and their stages.  The image is specifically of the tip of the onion root cell.  If we viewed the other parts of the onion, perhaps we would find that certain processes occur differently or at different rates.  Although, onions may seem boring, looking at them through a microscope shows a new world that would bring a tear to your eye.

On a side note, have you ever noticed that cells multiply by dividing?