Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

What is a good method to expose DNA, by itself, to sunscreen alone?

Hi,

I'm not sure whether it's possible to do that, although maybe some other experts can back me up here. What exactly are you trying to test? Perhaps you'd like to expose DNA to UV light instead and see the damaging effects? Getting some more details on your project would help me answer you. (:
You might want to check out this Science Buddies project for inspiration: https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... background

Good luck, and please post back with anything else!

Hello there,

It would be very helpful if you could provide us more information about the question that you would like to test and how you're thinking about testing it. I'm not exactly sure about what you mean by exposing DNA to sunscreen... are you planning on extracting DNA and then mixing it with sunscreen? What are you trying to test here?

Let us know more details about your ideas so we can give you the best advice possible. Don't hesitate to contact us with more questions! We'd be happy to brainstorm ideas with you and think of ways to test any questions you're interested in.

Best,
Connie

I am trying to see if there is any damage to DNA by just exposing it directly with sunscreen and running it in an alakline electrophoresis gel

Hello there,

Just out of curiosity, what made you decide that you want to expose DNA to sunscreen to see if there is any damage done to it? Are there studies implicating that sunscreen damages DNA? I think the more commonly accepted idea is that UV light (such as that coming from the sun) does damage to DNA, but I haven't heard anything about sunscreen before. Also, "exposing" the DNA to the sunscreen may be a problem. How exactly are you thinking about exposing it? Do you want the DNA to directly contact the sunscreen? Sunscreen is pretty thick and so if you want to directly incubate DNA with it, you would probably have to find something to dilute the sunscreen before adding the DNA to it, but even then, I don't know how that is going to affect how the DNA runs on the gel if you have it in a solution that's full of sunscreen.

Let us know a little bit about your thought process, what question you're interested in answering, and how you're thinking about testing that question so we can provide the best advice to you as possible. Also, we can help you brainstorm more ideas if necessary!

Connie