Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

To make my science fair experiment Bio-safety Level 1, I will need to find a source to obtain Salmonella DNA. Up till now, I have exploited the bacteria's DNA myself for my project to get approved by the science fair I need to find the DNA else where.
Does anyone know where I can find a solution to my problem?

Hello again. I wondered what happened to your project. I went back to the first post about testing meat for E coli, Listeria and Salmonella and it was in September 2015. Have you done any of the experiments you planned or are you still trying to decide how to do them?

Some months back I suggested that you could order a culture of Salmonella enteriditis from Carolina Bio and extract the DNA yourself. Your school won't allow you to do this? I don't know where your school could buy Salmonella DNA but you could call Carolina Bio and talk to tech support. They may know some source that we aren't aware of.

Is the reason you want the DNA is to use it as positive control for PCR? If you can't get it then you will have to do the PCR reaction without a control. If you do the reaction with bacterial DNA from spoiled meat and you get amplified DNA that shows up on the agarose gel then you can be confident that you have detected Salmonella. If you do not see a band after PCR then you would not be able to say that no Salmonella was present because you could not prove that your PCR reaction worked.

Try calling around to see if you can get the DNA. If not, just try the PCR without a control and hope for the best.

Sybee