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| In this experiment we are going to observe human cheek cells and chromosomes under the microscope to reinforce the idea of the scale of DNA molecules. Human body cells are diploid; they contain two copies of each chromosomes. Extracting DNA from cheek cells yield just a very small amount of DNA. Individual strands of DNA are too small to be visible to the eye. One million threads of DNA fit onto the period at the end of a sentence using Times New Roman, font 12 in WORD. The reason why we are able to see DNA in this activity is that there are so many of them, clumped together. |
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| We will extract DNA from their own cheek cells. This is Rootbeer scraping cheek cells off for viewing. 1) We took a glass slide and placed a drop of water in the middle. 2) We scraped our cheek cells off and the mixed the together with the water on the slide. |
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| We then placed the slides in the heater to dry. |
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| The next step was preparing slides of cheek cells, stained with methylene blue. We placed methylene blue on the slides, rinsed it off and placed them back in the heater to dry. |
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| Rootbeer placing the slides on the microscope for viewing. |
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| The final picture shows the cheek cells that we viewed. (methylene blue stains the nucleus) and the size of nucleus, chromosomes, and DNA. The blue die makes it able for us to see our cells under the microscope. Biology/Life Science-Extract your own DNA from cheek cells |
