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Pre-Lab
- How will you determine whether or not a food (corn in tortilla chips, cereal, etc.) has been genetically modified?
- What is PCR? What components are required in a reaction tube? What is the purpose of each component? How many steps are in a typical cycle of PCR? What happens during each step?
- Watch this 2.5 minute video to learn about the difference between “natural” and genetically modified foods:
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/xfeTtsaZ0pQ" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]
Reflective Questions
- The first step of the protocol requires DNA extraction. What is the purpose of the mortar and pestle?
- What is the name given to the state of the substance in the mortar? What did you do with this substance?
- What types of enzymes degrade DNA? What is required for these enzymes to degrade DNA? How will these enzymes be disabled during the DNA extraction?
- Why did you extract DNA from a non-GMO sample?
- Why did you conduct two PCR reactions for each food sample?
- What is the purpose of the thermal cycler?
- How will you know whether or not a food sample contains genetically modified material?
- Here is an excellent gel prepared by biotech students:
Lane Sample
1 non-GMO + plant primers
2 non-GMO + GMO primers
3 Cheetos + plant primers
4 Cheetos + GMO primers
5 GMO pos. control + plant primers
6 GMO pos. control + GMO primers
7 empty
8 empty
What do the results of the gel indicate?
Here’s another fantastic gel prepared by students. They loaded papaya in lanes 3 and 4 and the organic corn flakes in lanes 7 and 8. Has the papaya been genetically modified? What about the organic corn flakes?