Happy New Year Everyone! – I hope 2011 was kind to you and 2012 will be even better. Here is a new idea for a science fair project, but you will need to design it yourself. I will post other ideas soon.
Question: Which has more DNA, plants or animals?
Do Research on: importance of DNA, discovery of DNA, easy DNA extractions in the kitchen, plant and animal cells, plant and animal diversity, plant and animal complexity
Problems to overcome:
• Selection of “plant” and “animal” tissue (HINT: think about items that you could easily buy in a grocery store)
• Standardizing the amount of starting tissue (i.e. you must start with equivalent amounts)
• Measuring the amount of DNA when done (must be a quantitative measure – not just “more” vs. “less”)
Variations:
Which plant has the most DNA?
Which part of a plant has the most DNA?
Does cooking (or freezing) affect the amount of DNA recovered?
How can the amount of DNA recovered be optimized?
Do animals from different phyla, have different amounts of DNA? (HINT: ham and lobster come from different phyla within the animal kingdom)
Don’t forget the importance of replication! 3 tissue types does not count, you will need to repeat the extraction at least 3 times for EACH type of tissue evaluated.