- freezing a small piece of leaf tissue in liquid nitrogen (-196
degrees C !) and grinding it as finely as possible. - adding a
detergent to release the DNA from the cells of the leaf tissue.
- adding chloroform. The detergent and chloroform do not mix
(like oil and water), but proteins and other things we do not
want are drawn into the chloroform while the DNA is left in the
detergent. - the detergent layer is removed, and alcohol is
added to it. This precipitates the DNA (i.e., makes it turn into
a solid), and we can actually see it. I don’t have any pictures
of Pseudopanax DNA, but precipitated DNA all looks much the same
– see this link. It is possible to extract DNA using household
items (see this link). In order to analyse the DNA further we
have to make it go back into solution. The alcohol is tipped
off, and a small amount of salt solution is added; the DNA
‘dissolves’ in this. To test the quality and quantity of the
extracted DNA, we run a small amount of the DNA solution on an
agarose gel in a proce