How to Purify DNA Using Common Household Items

[maradydd]

Start with a tissue sample.

Place it in a salt buffer -- a saline solution made from purified water and non-iodized table salt. Add a little bit of meat tenderizer (it's a protease) and some shampoo (contains sodium dodecyl sulfate; you want about a 1% solution of this, but you'd have to determine that empirically) and allow to sit at room temperature until it turns into a slurry of formerly tissue, now digested goo.

Place this in a centrifuge -- a salad spinner should work nicely -- until you've separated out the solids from the liquids. Decant the liquid into a separate container. Add a concentrated salt solution so that the final molarity of sodium is ~1M. (You need a high ionic concentration.) Add isopropyl (rubbing) alcohol, about 1.5-2x the volume of the existing solution.

You will see a white stringy precipitate. This is DNA.

I love my job.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

shoooo... O_O
I am absolutely going to try that sometime!
(I wish those "rainy-day craft ideas" books I had when I was little had had something like *that* in them!)

[sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com]

Head out to your nearest Discovery Channel Store and take a look at the new exclusive DNA Lab. Not only did I wish that these were available when I was ten, but I've sworn that I'm getting one for my niece for her upcoming birthday. After all, why stop at extracting onion DNA when she can go mad with any number of other sources, including family members and friends?

[maradydd.livejournal.com]

The DNA Lab was a big hit at the office too.