Genetically Modified Foods Lab

Kit Purchased from

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Pre-Lab

  1. How will you determine whether or not a food (corn in tortilla chips, cereal, etc.) has been genetically modified?
  2. 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?
  3. 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

  1. The first step of the protocol requires DNA extraction.  What is the purpose of the mortar and pestle?                                       crushing-food-sample.jpg     grinding-food.jpg
  2. What is the name given to the state of the substance in the mortar?  What did you do with this substance?                              cheetos-slurry.jpg
  3. 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?
  4. Why did you extract DNA from a non-GMO sample?non-gmo.jpg
  5. Why did you conduct two PCR reactions for each food sample?pcr-samples.jpg
  6. What is the purpose of the thermal cycler?                     thermal-cycler-with-samples.jpg
  7. How will you know whether or not a food sample contains genetically modified material?
  8. Here is an excellent gel prepared by biotech students:gm-foods-gel.jpg

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?  gm-foods-gel-2.jpg              

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