he final question on your quiz this week will ask you about the results of this experiment. You may choose to do it yourse

he final question on your quiz this week will ask you about the results of this experiment. You may choose to do it yourself or use my data that I provided. Either way, you’ll need to be able to explain how DNA is extracted from a fruit such as a strawberry. It will also ask you why you chose to do the experiment yourself or use provided data – that will give us feedback for future semesters.

Question: Would a kiwifruit and strawberry that are approximately the same size also have approximately the same amount of DNA?

Background: You have learned that DNA is carried on chromosomes.  All mammals are diploid; however, not all plants are diploid. The common strawberry is octoploid (8n) and the cultivated kiwi is hexaploid (6n). Research the total number of chromosomes in the cells of each of these fruits and think about how this might correspond to the amount of DNA in these fruits cell nuclei.

Hypothesis: Hypothesize whether you would be able to detect a difference in DNA quantity from similarly sized strawberries and kiwis. Which fruit do you think would yield more DNA?

Test your hypothesis. (Or use my data below in the example if you don’t have the materials)

here is a video of the kiwi extraction (not me!) 

Record your observations: Because you are not quantitatively measuring DNA volume, you can record for each trial whether the two fruits produced the same or different amounts of DNA as observed by eye. If one or the other fruit produced noticeably more DNA, record this as well. Determine whether your observations are consistent with several pieces of each fruit.

Draw a conclusion: Given what you know about the number of chromosomes in each fruit, can you conclude that chromosome number necessarily correlates to DNA amount? Can you identify any drawbacks to this procedure? If you had access to a laboratory, how could you standardize your comparison and make it more quantitative?

To complete this assessment, address all of the points above in a BRIEF lab write up (hypothesis, observations, conclusion).  

Remember, you may use my data if you don’t have the materials to do this lab, but if you can do the lab yourself it is a super fun way to see actual DNA!

The strawberry video was giving me some trouble uploading but I have the data from it in the file upload so you can complete the assignment. You dont have to do the assignment yourself, you can use her data to complete this.