Strawberries Lab Report

The purpose of this lab experiment is to extract chromatin from an animal liver and strawberries. Unlike humans whom are diploid organisms with two sets of each chromosome, one from the mother and the other from the father, strawberries like most fruits are polyploidy, consisting of more than two copies of the same gene. Strawberries are octoploid that have eight copies of each gene, making it an ideal fruit for DNA extraction. Frozen strawberries are ideal because the ice in the intracellular fluid causes the cell to lyse and expand, destroying the cell and nucleus membrane of the cell. Strawberries are soft and easy to crush using a mortar and pestle. The purpose of pulverizing the strawberries is to destroy the plants cell wall. The cell wall is made up of cellulose, a hard insoluble material that is tough and rigid to protect cells. Physical force was required to break the cell wall and expose the nucleus of the cell. Animal cells are diploid organisms containing two copies of each chromosome, therefore a more rigorous extraction process in needed to for DNA …show more content…
The salt/detergent was prepared by mixing 1L of distilled water, 50ml of detergent and 7.5 grams of salt. The solution was headed to 60° Celsius and maintained through the lab. The nuclear membrane is made up of phospholipid bilayer, a thin membrane made up of two-lipid bilayer. The soap detergent dissolves the lipid bilayer on the nucleus and cell membrane releasing DNA. NaCl is used to separate proteins from the DNA. Na= molecules are attracted to the negatively charged phosphate group PO3- causing them to bind together. This neutralizes the charge on the molecule making it less soluble in water. The solution was filtered using a coffee filter in order to separate the chromatin and protein molecules from other cellular fibers and large protein