Purpose:
The purpose of this lab was to use PCR and get needed resources to track the history of our DNA. Also to learn more in biotechnology and practice procedures in the lab and to figure out if humans are still evolving.
Hypothesis:
My hypothesis for this lab is that we will analyze my own DNA which i will then be able to tell how many alu repeats are in my DNA. GIven this i'm pretty sure i will be able to figure out where my DNA was first originated if everything works out correctly.
Procedure:
The Procedure of this project was on the back of the packet that we received in class, in accordance to BABEC ALU PCR 2017.
Data/Observations:
In this lab, it was very hard and complicated to take note of data and there were not many things that I was able to observe data from because our data was inconclusive. The classroom was rather small and we had limited supplies.
However some things that I did notice was that is was very crucial to have everything be super clean and free of bacteria of the whole project could go wrong. Also when we were getting our DNA from the mixture of saliva and Salt water if u didnt do it for long enough it could ruin the project. Also I noticed that the DNA had a very high density and would always sink to the bottom in the test tubes. I also noticed that using the pipettes was a very accurate way of measuring the liquids.
In this lab, we were using a 2 percent agarose gel and it was ran at 150v for 20 minutes and stained using gelled for 12 hours. Lane A1 and B1 have 100 bp ladder lane and b-18 have a 2o ml loading dye solution that was then inserted in the middle of the gel. Lane B section 2 has My DNA and as u can see it was inconclusive.
Analysis:
In the pictures above, the one on the far left is on Our DNA. The two other pictures are both calculations that we had to use to find the genotype frequencies. This is the percentage of individuals as a population.
For my lab, i did not get any results from my DNA which was very unfortunate. In my group, we did have a couple of errors, they were just minor and were easy to fix like getting the DNA and PCR mixed with. Another error that my group had was that we put the DNA in the ice box for not enough time and the cells did not distribute to each other . This is also due to the environment that we were working in, very small and cramped, and also i think that if we inserted more DNA we would of had a better chance of finding the alu Repeats.
Some of the things that we can do to improve this lab were to be more accurate on task and measurements. Also time management was a problem for my group. I would also like to try this lab again with conditions that would make it easier to get better results from last time.
Conclusion:
In this lab, I thought that this lab was very challenging for myself and my group. Most of the kids in the class did not get results including my group. We conducted this experiment by mixing salt water and our saliva, trying to use the PCR and our DNA which would lead us to discover our alu repeats. Receiving this information, we could tell where our DNA originated. My DNA is shown in the blue picture above. Like the majority of the class, most people did not get results, meaning somewhere in the project, we messed up. Some evidence for that is we didn't get a lot of ice to really keep our DNA cool, so the heat getting to it could have been a problem. This was probably very vital to the whole lab because everything was based on the DNA and if that was messed up, then it all was messed up. The main goal for this lab was to get results back from our DNA by looking at our alu repeats. I did not get that because somewhere in the project my group or myself had messed up and we were unable to get results.
For this project, this was one of the hardest labs that I have ever done. It was so hard because everything had to be perfect, if one thing went wrong then the whole Lab would be messed up and we would have to restart. Luckily that did not happen, although my group and I did not get any results back, meaning we did something wrong. Some things that went well in our group was understanding of the usage fir the equipment and staying focused. Some things that went poorly were team cooperation and agreement with things. Two peaks for this project were learning about DNA and RNA and then learning how to extact it form a human or animal. Two pits for this project were getting in arguments with my team members and staying on task. I though that this lab was very challenging, but i learned a lot from it.
Below, the left and middle pictures are pictures of the math that we used to find the alu repeat and is described above, the picture on the right is what it all looked like