Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Our science fair project is titled "Which has more DNA: Fruits, Vegetables or Humans?" Can we use a digital scale to "weigh" the DNA. Do you have any suggestions to quantify the amount of DNA extracted?

Hi

Yes, you can weigh the DNA that you isolated from each item and compare the results provided that you used equal amounts of the items to do the extraction. Read this previous set of Scibuddy postings on this project as it has a lot of excellent information and links: viewtopic.php?t=11500

I found some more info on the web about the relative amounts of DNA between plants and animals that might be helpful:

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/2000/02.10/onion.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/31/scien ... genes.html

Please post again if you have more questions.

Sybee