DNA Extraction

A student from the upper level of the biomedical class came and talk to us about the procedures that a nurse or doctor has to follow when a sexual assault case in admitted into a hospital. When treating a rape victim they will take swabs of DNA from the victim to collect both the victim's and assailant's DNA. We were able to go through this procedure with strawberries in order to prepare for the upcoming forensic week. We started by receiving a strawberry and a small plastic bag. We would then place the strawberry in the bag and crush it up until we received a test tube and a filter sheet. Before we filtered the juice the older student went around adding a pink liquid into each bag after the berry was successfully crushed up. We had to move the juices from the strawberry to the test tube without getting any bits and pieces of the actual berry in the tube. From then the older student went around placing a clear liquid into each test tube, and told us to shake the tube until everything was fully combined. When we stopped shaking we could see string like particles in the liquid, which was the DNA of the berry.