Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Dear sciencebuddies,

My science fair project is due in one week. I did the "Building your own tool for identifying DNA" project. It's the one with gel electrophoresis. I have done the experiment and recorded my results and observations... my only problem is that I don't have a purpose for it. I thought about using the one mentioned on the page: Which color food dye has more macromolecules?
If that is a good purpose and I can apply my data to it I need to know how to measure the macromolecules. I recorded the distance in cm that the macromolecules moved from the wells and the colors every 10 minutes. If it's not a good purpose, I need some ideas fast because I'm not really sure what the purpose for the experiment was. Also it wasn't clear if I'm measuring DNA, molecules, or macromolecules in the experiment. Thank you so much in advance, and please reply quickly!

Hi,
While gel electrophoresis is normally used to separate DNA and RNA fragments, in this experiment, you are separating the macromolecules found in the dye. This is the purpose of performing the procedure. Since it seems like you are unfamiliar with the terminology, a macromolecule is just a particularly large molecule. Since food coloring is not alive, it does not have DNA. While your question "Which food dye has more macromolecules?" is valid, I think it would work better if you focused more on the colors that resulted from the electrophoresis instead of just the amount. For example, what colors separated for red dye vs blue or green dye?
If you have any more questions, please ask.

Also, it may be helpful to check out the experiment page again, the video on it outlines the procedure for the experiment and it may be useful to watch.

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... p028.shtml