Pulling DNA from onions and peas

Students in Cily Rueda's OPAL enrichment class extracted Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) from an onion and peas during an experiment today.

The students ground the vegetables up in a blender to break apart the cells, mixed the concoction with soap and salt solution to draw DNA out of cells and then mixed it with isopropyl alcohol to get DNA to clump and 'precipitate' out of the solution. Each students took a small sample of the DNA home.

Academic Head for Science Randy Jenkins also joined the students for this experiement.

Last week, they extracted DNA from bananas.

Students at Glendaal, Glen-Worden and Sacandaga in the enrichment program have or will do the same experiment in the coming weeks.