This lab was very simple and yet we (Michael) managed to mess up by adding in too much water. Lesson learned, beaker measurements are APPROXIMATE. Graduated cylinders are precise.... Anyway, we added one gram of wheat germ to a test tube and added "20ml" of hot water and then stirred the mixture for 5 minutes (ow..). This gave us a weird pale yellow color. After this mixing, we mixed in APPROXIMATELY -.- 1 gram of liquid dish washing detergent (DAWN). The addition of the detergent ate and destroyed the cell membrane, allowing the DNA of the wheat germ to precipitate out. this we had to mix together very carefully as to not make it foam and bubble. This was another 5 minutes of on and off mixing. THEN, the test tube was taken out of the holder and tilted to about a 45 degree angle. Slowly, ethyl alcohol was added as to not mix the mixture and layered on top. Back in the holder the wheat germ mixture was in 4 layers and after 10 minutes of waiting the DNA (should have..) was at the edge of the detergent alcohol mixture and looked like wet cotton.
Finally it was all dumped down the drain.
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