Extracting DNA from anything living. Is this for real?
 

Well how 'bout a scientific question? I just ran into this website and was wondering if this was true or not. I think I remember making around a D in my science classes so I have no idea. :o

So is this for real or is it like a spoof or joke or whatever?

Linky

- Undercover_Man :cool:

I've never done that experiment before, but everything seems to check out. And that's DNA on the Q-tip at the end. Besides, it's on a college server, and not a student web site. That gives it a lot of street cred right there.

Yup, it's absolutelly possible. I did it last year myself. After you get the pea cell "soup", you pour detergent, which breaks down the cell membrane of the pea cells, which releases all the cytoplasm and everything that's in it, including the nucleus. Now, I don't really remember the purpose of the meat tenderizer, but I think it's either to break up the nuclear membrane, or to unwind the chromosomes. In either case, you pour alcohol afterwards to make the DNA rise to the surface.

Interesting. Now all I have to do is travel back in time before DNA was discovered and do this experiment and make millions!!!

So what can one do with the DNA? Anything? Can any other neat experiments be done with the DNA that you extract? Or does the fun end there? Hmmm...I wonder how it tastes.

Perfect place to put this.
DNA 2.0 Inc.
Some one tell me what is this for? I read that synthesizing DNA produces effects that weren't seen. I remember some group tried to increase the size of a potato and starches were produced that humans couldn't eat. Sure I think that we should use gene synthesis but how far advanced is what this place is doing?

It's not really useful - you could look at the stuff under a REALLY powerful microscope, but I guess it would have broken and unwound itselft after all that rough treatment - like looking at shredded documents in the bins out the back of some office.

Does anyone else think that that site is bogus?

^^^
Well, the have a contact page that shows a map of their facility and a few phone numbers and addresses ans stuff. I'd be easy to confirm if they're for real or not.

I mean the site is real and they might say that what they do is real, but we're talking about improving genes. The last time I've heard of this, we had no idea what to do with all the ATCGs that the Genome project decoded. Now right of a sudden we figure out how to "program" DNA???

Ok, I'm gonna run out and buy the stuff for the extraction in the first link.

I wanna extract my DNA... so... what would be the best method? Blood? Saliva?

...and no, I'm not doing THAT, haha.

Well, when they take DNA samples, it's usually a cheek swab. You can take a cotton swab or a toothpick and gently scrape the inside of your cheek. You'll get some nice skin cells on the swab. It'll be next to nothing compared to the peas, though. Blood would work, but I don't know how many blood cells you would get after separating them from the serum.

You could try a chunk of fresh (meaning: not frozen) meat. That would give you plenty of cells. I say unfrozen because the ice crystals would puncture the cells and possibly puncture the DNA as well.

That would just give you half your DNA anyway.

No, somewhere in the maze of subsites of DNA 2.0, I found that they do specific genetic alterations. Something about you requesting retroviruses to alter only certain genes of your already existing smaple. I might have dreamed it but I am positive that I found this site from HowStuffWorks.com. A buddy of mine and I a while back emailed the company about some process they described that we pretended to know about, and they sent back essays written by the people that claim to work there.
Also the people that work there, are real. We found their essays and previous jobs.

The way they do it in schools, which does not require meat tenderizer, is using Gatorade (Gatorade has some sort of chemical in it that , I think, acts as the meat tenderizer). So, anyway, you get some Gatorade, and activelly rinse your mouth with it for about a minute or so. Don't swallow. Now spit it out into a glass or something. Add detergent and mix it up for another inute or so (don't remember). Eventually add your alcohol and hopefully you'll see DNA rise to the top.

INAB (I'm not a biologist) but my SO is. Now the DNA 2.0 thing: That actually appears fairly common in science (there is a price wars of sorts going on right now, with pricing per the base pair). What happens, as I understand it, is you ask for a certain sequence, they make it, you then try to insert it into whatever you're trying to insert it into, so that you can express something or another, put a sequence for a glowing protein next to the sequence that creates a certain protein, and perhaps when that protein is expressed, the glowy one will be too, so that you can see which cells expressed it by counting the glowing ones. The hard part here is figuring out what will happen when you actually put the sequences together.

Now the part about extracting your DNA. It sounds a lot like what my SO does to extract DNA in her lab. You break apart the cells some how (in her case with tiny glass beads) and mix it around until the DNA comes out on top, that's the scientific explanation ;) . The use of a blender seems a little strange until you realize that blenders were invented in a bio lab. And the amount you get back is also plausible since my SO once reported a messing with a 2 foot long strand of DNA and cutting it with scissors.

I consulted a chemistry teacher and he gave me a rather reasonable explanation for DNA 2.0. So what he said is that DNA 2.0 has sort of like a library of genes, which they got from organisms that have undergone a mutation and were expressing a certain trait. DNA 2.0 took that organism's DNA cut it up into genes and figured out which one was responsible for the trait. The only reason that I would not believe this explanation is because they actually say on the site that you can custom order your own genes....

Nah, the custom order works like this, you pay them $1 a base pair, give them the sequence you want. They make it for you. Now $1 a base pair seems cheap. But to do anything even basic, like create a simple protein, that's a couple thousand dollars. As it gets bigger, it gets harder, hence the $1 a base pair. The problem of course if getting the correct gene sequence to use, and also being able to insert that sequence into dna at the correct point. Since genes really just control things like protein production, we really don't know their effects in complex organisms, well anything more complex than single cellular. So that's why we don't see people with lizard skin, although there was a glowing goldfish once.

The price is outrageous....

Wasn't there a glowing monkey once that live like for few days or so??

Dead on, we use this stuff for genetics lab all the time and if you go through the order process some you get links to the NCBI website for gene viewing, at least for the standard sequences. I just wanted to say about the glowing goldfish, They have actually engineered zebrafish that glow under UV light, that live and reproduce. I'm not sure if the offspring glow too(I don't see why they wouldn't) but I searched froogle and found a couple sites selling them

We did that in one of my Bio labs, we used some kind of cow meat, it was gross!