Team:KULeuven/Workshop

WORKSHOP

The team has organized a workshop for children aged 9-12 years old on the 17th of August in Oud-Heverlee. They have explained synthetic biology in a playful way and afterwards the children drew their own visions on synthetic biology and what they would like to create with synthetic biology. A mini-documentary is being made and will be posted on our wiki shortly. The workshop was also filmed by ROB TV and this report was recently broadcasted on their network (http://robtv.be/nieuws/oud-heverlee/tienjarigen-ontdekken-dna).

Protocol to isolate the DNA of a tomato

What do we need?

• Tomato
• Salt
• Water
• Detergent
• Ethanol (or whiskey/vodka)
• 3 bowls
• Knife (plastic for the kids)
• A whisk
• Microliter pipet and pipet tips
• Eppendorf tubes
• Filters (coffee filters)
• Funnel

How to isolate DNA?

• Cut a tomato into pieces and put it into a bowl.
• Make a solution of ... (in another bowl)
  • 5 ml Detergent
  • 1 teaspoon of salt
  • 45 ml water
• Add the solution to the pieces of tomato.
• Use the whisk to mix the solution with the pieces of tomato.
• Put the filter in the funnel and pour the tomato - solution mix in the funnel. The filtrate contains DNA.
• To make the DNA visible:
  • Pipet 0,5 ml of the filtrate in an Eppendorf tube
  • Add 1 ml of Ethanol
  • Close the Eppendorf tube
  • Turn the Eppendorf tube with a gentle movement up and down.
• The red color pellet (looks like snot) is DNA.