Wwek2 dicussions Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Wwek2 dicussions - Case Study Example Besides, an individual may likewise fill the assessment exhortation archive guarantee structure to ask on the most proficient method to deal with non-divulgence matters. It primarily encourages the citizen to give data that he should have documented with the assessment form however was found late. What's more, people may likewise fill the duty relevant data divulgence structure. The alternative suggests to the IRS that the citizen is true and may not prescribe any review procedure to reveal any undisclosed salary data. Thirdly, a customer may likewise make a willful revelation on account of seaward records since it causes them to get agreeable and stay away from criminal arraignment. Such an alternative shows the citizen is eager to coordinate, and, accordingly, the IRS may forgo the punishment and may not enjoy evaluating group to test the customer. At last, the customer may choose to face the challenge and stand by to be brought by the IRS for non-revelation. Notwithstanding, this choice may land the customer in a difficult situation. As a specialist, I suggest that the customer gets true and recovers the missing data from his accomplice. From that point onward, he ought to intentionally reveal to the IRS all the pay data that were not unveiled. One should document the altered return data or contact IRS quickly to dodge punishments or any criminal arraignment that may emerge. Acting genuinely with no push enables the customer to maintain a strategic distance from IRS reviews. Desai, R., and Roberts, R. (2012). Lacks in the Code of Conduct: The AICPA Rhetoric Surrounding the Tax Return Preparation Outsourcing Disclosure Rules. Journal of Business Ethics,â 114(3), 457-471.

Compare and Contrast Between MS Word and Openoffice Writer

Question: Examine about the Compare and Contrast Between MS Word and Openoffice Writer. Answer: Presentation The said report is being set up for my manager who is thinking about appropriation of work area application and henceforth needs to comprehend which one would be better as far as usefulness and the simplicity of its utilization. The two items that are being considered are MS Word and Open Office Writer. Anyway before these two items can be contrasted it is significant with think quickly about these two application programming. MS Word is the shortened variant of Microsoft Office, is a graphical word handling application which empowers clients to type content in English or such different dialects. Word records empower clients to send messages or type content reports effortlessly. It is a piece of the Microsoft Office Suite. Like the said application bundle is the OpenOffice Writer which has a place with the OpenOffice programming bundle. The equivalent is good with different working frameworks, for example, Microsoft Windows, Linux and Solaris. It was out under the provisions of the Apache License. Conversation The said conversation heads towards looking at the two application frameworks for example MS Word and OpenOffice Writer with respects the capacities it performs and the simplicity of its ease of use as separated from the cost factor. These two components assume a definitive job with respects which application to introduce. As a matter of first importance it is to be comprehended that the application that we picked should bolster both more seasoned forms of the PCs and workstations and the more current forms too. The OpenOffice proposes more noteworthy help for the PCs with more established forms when contrasted with the most recent releases of Microsoft Office. Office 2003 characterizes that its base spec is a Pentium 450 MHz with 256 MB RAM while OpenOffice records a Pentium 166 MHz processor with 128 MB RAM. As expressed before OpenOffice runs well on Linux and similar runs even more easily with more seasoned frameworks which Windows 2000 or XP doesnt. Anyway when thought about premise its convenience, any representative who has utilized MS Word will think that its simple to work with Writer also. The underlying interface of OpenOffice was not easy to understand but rather its fresher form 2.0 has embraced a page from Microsoft Book, in this way guaranteeing the interface currently is a progressively recognizable one. Exchanging over from MS Word to OpenOffice Writer would resemble moving from the Office 2000 adaptation of MS Word to Office 2003 rendition of MS Word. The contrast between the two applications is minor yet the theoretical structure is same. Focussing on explicit capacities performed by these applications and the ones which are a piece of the every day use of the association the contrast between the two will empower my manager to settle on the choice. STYLE: The Style work causes the clients to characterize the arrangements they need in their content or section once and afterward apply it to the whole archive. MS Word permits a similar capacity and whenever done physically likewise it just prompts penance of a tad of time. Anyway if there should arise an occurrence of OpenOffice Writer the said circumstance isn't the equivalent. On the off chance that the equivalent is done physically in Writer, at that point the errand is progressively arduous and lumbering along these lines powers the clients to do organizing of a report with styles in particular. Further the page style work in a Writer is explicitly helpful for the originators and not for the ones who know the nuts and bolts of the PCs. In any case, in logical inconsistency to the equivalent the page structure of MS Word is a lot more straightforward and doesn't reach out past adding outskirts to the pages and topics for fundamental page. In this way it very well may be said that Writer isn't noteworthy for the clients who do designing physically due to the wide use of styles yet the requirement of style by Writer gives the program the force it needs. While despite the fact that MS Word has an improved rendition of arranging yet it is restricted and less incredible when contrasted with the Writer. The two figures underneath show the window of MS Word and OpenOffice Writer separately. Layouts: Templates are the spared archives with the goal that handling of different reports should be possible premise those formats. In spite of the fact that similar assists with sparing a ton of time yet in MS Word it causes different issues. The choice with respects arranging is a piece of both the format and the record also. In the event that the information in the two spots are not the equivalent, at that point the record is viewed as tainted and not of any utilization. Further the said circumstance is muddled due to the way that MS Word permits various formats to be a piece of a solitary archive. The second issue with respects this capacity is that the style capacities gives an alternative to the clients to choose the choice of Add to Template button at whatever point changes are to be made physically (Kath, 2011). In spite of the fact that might be that the said highlight is empowered to keep up a sync between the formats and the archives however shockingly the equivalent can prompt reformatting of the report when the client revives the equivalent. Accordingly it presumes that the default layout shifts from workstations to workstations. In this way the clients who use MS Word are commonly uncertain of the reality with regards to how a report would take after on another framework. In logical inconsistency to the equivalent the said issues don't happen in OpenOffice Writer. The connection between the formats and the records are not as close as that in MS Word. Layout is permitted to do just beginning designing and an association is given which gives the alternative of refreshing the report by rolling out sufficient improvements to the format. Hence the issue of debasement of record is considerably less in Writer than in Word. TABLES: The said include is nearly the equivalent in both the Writer just as MS Word yet the said is less adaptable when contrasted with the Word 2003 component of table. In spite of the fact that the table component in Word isn't so lavish however the auto designing element of table which the Writer offers is only for and not gainful. For instance if a table with five lines is made utilizing auto-position with substitute green and red columns then the said include is effectively pertinent just for those five lines and not for any additional line included further (Rivas, 2016). In any case, it is to be comprehended that Writer performs essential estimations in a superior way and its framework is a lot simpler from the clients perspective when contrasted with the MS Words obscure framework (Wiki.openoffice.org, 2016) HEADERS AND FOOTERS: Unfortunately with respects the said work MS Word is as yet battling by a WYSIWYG treatment. The equivalent is as yet not obvious effectively on the MS Word window and clients need to investigate an awkward gliding window. In any case, in Writer the equivalent isn't an issue as the header and footer are effectively observable in the altering windowpane. In this manner in Writer, placing in various headers involves characterizing new page styles and moving from one pages header or footer to the next involves moving the cursor or utilizing console alternate routes. Along these lines the header and footer of MS Word needs genuine redoing. DRAWING TOOLS: The variant 2.0 of the Writer has a comparable attracting instrument highlight to that of the Word 2003. Both the application offers such drawing apparatuses which empowers clients to perform basic and simple designs work. Despite the fact that MS Word has an additional favorable position of Visio being a piece of its Office Suite however OOo Writer likewise has a prevalent selection of illustrations utilized by and large in its OOo Draw work. In this way for this situation both remain at a similar page. Records AND TABLE OF CONTENTS: Although both the applications offer clients to make files and the chapter by chapter list yet more noteworthy number of choices are accessible in Writer than in MS Word. For example, Writer offers the clients to partition the files and the table fo substance into segments or set a foundation shading or realistic which isn't permitted by MS Word (ByField, 2005). Accordingly Writer is a superior alternative with this view as it offers the clients with a decision of more extensive structures. EMAIL INTEGRATION: The best favorable position the MS Word offers is that of incorporation of Emails with the Microsoft Outlook which is an email and calendaring bundle . It empowers to send an email legitimately from the MS Word and furthermore empowers to see the document straightforwardly in the Outlook without opening the application. Anyway the equivalent isn't the scene in Writer which permits to email archives however not reviewing (Mal, 2015). For calendaring a different application should be downloaded. End On dissecting the above information it is obvious that Writer is a stride in front of MS Word in a large portion of the highlights it offers and the convenience of the equivalent. Essayist empowers one to make and arrangement bigger and longer records simple. The documentation of the OpenOffice.org has a past of being written in Writer itself on account of which the software engineers have an additional preferred position of including different instruments as required. This is the thing that makes the Writer better than contenders, for example, MS Word. Also it is inappropriate to state that Writer is impeccable in all setting as so as to duplicate the component of MS Word numerous significant highlights get covered up. The equivalent is performing remarkably when contrasted with MS Word and in thinking about the necessities of our office, I would recommend that we should switch over to OpenOffice Writer as it would assist us with creating and arrangement bigger records no sweat. Time is likewise equal to cash in todays situation and straightforwardness is the thing that all clients turn upward to, henceforth keeping these two significant thoughts exchanging over to OpenOffice Writer is better. References: ByField, B., (2005), OpenOffcie.org Writer versus Microsoft Word, Available at https://www.linux.com/news/openofficeorg-essayist versus microsoft-word (Accessed 02nd December 2016) Kath, B., (2011), Difference between Microsoft Word, OpenOffice Writer and Google Doc, Available at https://barbarakath.blogspot.in/2011/08/distinction between-microsoft-word.html (Accessed 02nd December 2016) Mal, B., (2015), MS Office Vs Open Office, Available at https://www.linkedin.com/beat/ms-office-versus open-mal-b (Accessed 02nd December 2016) Rivas, D., (2016), Microsoft Off

DNA and How to Extract It

DNA and How to Extract It This past March, a few days after my birthday, I spent a Saturday teaching three iterations of a three-hour-long class called Hands-on Introduction to DNA! to seventh through ninth graders at Spark, a day-long assortment of classes for middle and high school students organized by the MIT student group ESP (Educational Studies Program) and taught by MIT students and community members. ESP seems to contain most of my Random Hall friends as well as the wonderful Anna H. ’14, who has blogged about teaching ESP classes here and here. This year’s 266 Spark classes included classes you might expect, such as Computational Language Theory and Extreme Math, and classes you might not expect, such as How to Plan and Execute Covert Operations in Deep Cover and The Game Mechanics of Pokémon. There was Synthetic Biology, Projective Geometry, Chocolate Tasting, and Slide Rules. There was Crayfish: Take It Apart!, Sea Urchin: Take It Apart!, and their antithesis, Put Together the Pile of Junk! My Spark class revolved around a DNA extraction protocol that my little brother Max tried as a science fair project. We started out with a short introductory lecture about DNA and then we isolated the genetic material from peas, corn, and strawberries, which was an awesome, colorful, goopy mess. If DNA is nothing new, feel free to skip to the video and the extraction protocol, or just the extraction protocol. From the beginningâ€" Our bodies are an ecosystem of hundreds of trillions of tiny bacteria and tens of trillions of our own cells, small bags of stuff that do a lot of work to keep us alive. We are interested in the nucleus of the cell, which encloses the DNA. Your DNA is a story, uniquely yours, that you read out as you live and eventually pass on to your children. Instead of paper, it is written on a long string using only four letters. Each word in the story is three letters long. The words form sentences called genes, which, alone or in groups, determine the traits you start with, for example your hair color, your eye color, and your blood type. Though your cells have diverse specializations, your DNA is identical in every cell of your body. It contains all the information needed to build you up and then maintain you; it determines how you will grow and develop within your environment and to a potentially large extent it dictates how and when you will eventually break apart and die. A priority in current research is deciphering our DNA and the DNA of other species for use in medicine, agriculture, and history. The hope is that by learning how to read our DNA, we will be able to better understand genetic disorders and detect them before they appear, improve crop yield, and understand how we got to be human. Genomics is a new and quickly evolving field with a huge capacity to extend and improve human life. For the most part, DNA carries out its action through proteins. A gene is first transcribed into less stable messenger RNA. Interrupting, or intronic, information is cut out of the messenger RNA and the remaining RNA molecule is sent out of the nucleus and into the endoplasmic reticulum. In the endoplasmic reticulum the messenger RNA is copied again, this time into protein. This final translation is done by transfer molecules, which contain the code for translation, and ribosomes, which line up the messenger RNA and the transfer molecules so that they can interact. The transfer molecules, called tRNAs, are like three-pronged forks. On one end are three letters from the original DNA sequence, a word, written in RNA. The other end holds the corresponding protein monomer, the amino acid. The amino acid that corresponds to each word varies depending on the species. The ribosome lines up the transfer molecule forks with the attached protein monomers along the RNA. The amino acids are conn ected to form a protein, after which the transfer molecules are reused and the messenger RNA is degraded. The cell sends the completed protein product to the Golgi apparatus, the cell’s post office, and the Golgi packages the protein and sends it to its destination inside or outside the cell. The protein then carries out the function prescribed by its encoding DNA, whether it is the keratin in your hair or an antibody in your immune system. Meanwhile the original DNA is safe in the nucleus, in two copies. It never leaves, and it is split apart and replicated only when the entire cell is replicated. The human genome is written in about 3 billion base pairs, or letters. If you stretch out the DNA from one nonreplicating cell, it will be about two meters long (3 billion base pairs in 23 chromosomes · two of each chromosome in the cell · 0.34 nanometers between consecutive base pairs). If you concatenate the DNA from all of your cells and stretch it out as one string, it will reach the sun and back 67 to 333 times, or the moon and back 25,000 to 125,000 times (2 meters of DNA in each cell · about 10 to 50 trillion cells in the human body ÷ 300 million kilometers from the Earth to the sun and back, or 800,000 kilometers from the Earth to the moon and back). In the cell, the DNA is wound tightly around proteins called histones, and for this reason, even though we will try to degrade the proteins, the DNA will precipitate in clumps rather than clean strings when we extract it from a vegetable or fruit. Here’s all that in vivid, computer animated action: This video is from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Australia. They have other equally mesmerizing and informative animations in high definition on their web site, and you should go watch them, too, if you enjoyed this one. While we watched this video we set up the first steps of the DNA extraction protocol, which contains a convenient 10-minute break. Below is the protocol we used. The students wanted to know what each step does to the DNA, so I’ll try to explain it here as well. Materials: A blender. A mesh strainer with very small holes. If you are alone: A clear cup. It looks really cool if you use a champagne glass. A wooden BBQ skewer or something else with which to stir. One eighth teaspoon table salt. About one cup of cold water. A pinch of meat tenderizer or contact lens solution. (We used meat tenderizer.) Two tablespoons liquid laundry detergent. Use clear laundry detergent. Colored laundry detergent will overpower the color of the fruit or vegetable. About half a cup of something that was once alive. It’s okay if it’s frozen. We tried strawberries, split peas, and corn. The kids were most excited about the strawberries. I thought the peas looked coolest. The frozen corn was not very exciting for anybody. A small jug of rubbing alcohol with at least 95% alcohol content. If you are with 10-20 friends: A bag of small, clear, disposable cups. The more translucent cups are worth the extra money. A bag of wooden BBQ skewers or something else with which to stir. One container of table salt from your kitchen. Gallon jug of cold water, which you brought to school empty and filled with cold tap water in the bathroom before class. Two small shakers of meat tenderizer. You won’t use much of this, but it’s better to have two so that they can both be passed around at the same time. A small bottle of clear liquid laundry detergent. A bag or two or three of something that was once alive, like a fruit or a vegetable. It’s okay if it’s frozen. Several jugs of rubbing alcohol with about 95% alcohol content. You’ll need about as much rubbing alcohol as vegetable or fruit, which might be a lot. (Weird looks at the check-out line come with the vast, yellow and green polka-dotted territory of being awesome.) Leave time to potentially stop by multiple CVSes. Among the materials, rubbing alcohol (isopropyl alcohol) can cause irritation to eyes, skin, or the respiratory system. Isopropyl alcohol vapors can irritate the eyes and the respiratory system, contact with eyes can cause damage and burns, and ingestion or inhalation can cause vomiting, drowsiness, and death. The lethal dose is about one cup. It’s unlikely you’ll be able to drink very much, but if you do you will die. You also don’t want to eat the laundry detergent or get it in your eyes. Procedure: Combine in the blender one part vegetable or fruit, two parts cold water, and the salt. If you’re doing this alone, it’ll be half a cup of vegetable or fruit, one cup water, and one eighth teaspoon salt. If you’re doing this with a group you’ll want to fill the blender and scale up the salt appropriately. Blend on high for 15 to 25 seconds.  It is not important that the water be cold, but it is helpful. Most things, including DNA, tend to be less soluble at lower temperatures. (The exception is proteins, which start denaturing, or losing their structure, at higher temperatures, exposing their hydrophobic parts and forcing them to clump together to avoid surrounding water.) The salt, NaCl, dissolves in the water, separating into the charged ions Na+ and Cl. The Na+ neutralizes the negatively charged DNA, allowing the DNA strands to clump together rather than be repelled by each other’s negative charge. Balance your mesh strainer over a clear cup and pour the liquid contents of the blender through the strainer and into the cup. The cup should be at most half full. If you’re doing this with a group you should divide the contents of the blender equally among the group and line the cups up on the table for the next step. Keep in mind that the goop that comes out of the blender earlier has more DNA in it than the goop that comes out of the blender later. Add two tablespoons of clear liquid laundry detergent to each cup of vegetable goop. If you’re doing this with a group you can use the bottommost line in one of the plastic cups to measure out a very approximate two tablespoons.  The laundry detergent disrupts the membrane enclosing the cell and potentially the nuclear membrane enclosing the DNA. Distribute a vegetable goop cup and a BBQ skewer to each person. Everyone should stir gently and then let the solution stand for 10 minutes. Now is a good time to watch the above 7-minute video. Pass around the meat tenderizer and the rubbing alcohol. Each person should add a pinch of meat tenderizer to their cup and stir gently again, and then add about as much rubbing alcohol as there is vegetable mixture. The rubbing alcohol makes the DNA clump together, since the DNA is less soluble in rubbing alcohol (or any other alcohol) than in water. The meat tenderizer contains protease, an enzyme that degrades the proteins that accompany the DNA. The DNA will appear as white goop on the surface of the green or red goop. You can spin it onto the BBQ skewer like cotton candy, but I think it looks prettier and much less gross if it’s left in the cup.  Here are some photos my students took at the end of the process. The fruits and vegetables used, clockwise from the top left, are strawberries, peas, corn, and mixed berry, all frozen. That no one photographed the DNA extracted from the corn is, I think, additional testament to frozen corn not being very interesting.       Afterwards, I opened the floor to questions and short chalk talks and we ended up going in very interesting directions. I almost wish I’d had an older class so that students could teach each other more than I talked at them, but at the same time it seems like younger people ask more questions and their questions are often more interesting. Some of the things we talked about were transposons, viruses, cancer, stem cells, ribosomes and the RNA world, DNA sequencing technologies, sex chromosomes and their evolution, alternative splice sites, and the evolutionary benefits of aging and death. I got some emails in the following days expressing interest in biology and asking about things we talked about in class, which was such a wonderful feeling. If you have time and a presentation at your local elementary school seems like something you would enjoy, you should ask about trying it. A few weeks ago my mom repeated the presentation and the DNA extraction with my little brother’s fifth grade class, and apparently they asked even more interesting questions. It seems like elementary school teachers are usually thrilled to have alumni or parents present about what theyve been up to in high school and college and beyond. If you are in middle or high school and youd like to learn more about genomics and DNA, there are free resources online that you should check out: edx.org Free online courses from MIT, Harvard, and other excellent schools that mirror actual undergraduate courses, with labs, graded tests, online real-human interaction, and the possibility of earning a certificate. In particular, you might be interested in: 7.00x  Introduction to Biology: The Secret of Life,  taught by Dr. Eric Lander, from the Human Genome Project 6.00x  Introduction to Computer Science and Programming ocw.mit.edu Free material from many, many MIT classes, including video lectures. In particular, you might be interested in: Biology highlights for high school 7.01SC Fundamentals of Biology, also taught by Dr. Eric Lander, along with Dr. Robert Weinberg, who made huge contributions to cancer research (both won 3 million dollars this past February for their research) 6.00SC Introduction to Computer Science and Programming codecademy.com Free interactive programming classes online. wikipedia.org/wiki/genomics Excellent introductory information. Follow the links! If you have questions, if you do a presentation, or if you try a DNA extraction, alone or with a class, and you comment or email me about what happened it would make me very happyâ€"especially if you are adventurous and try a DNA extraction from something new. (Somewhat relatedly, today is the 161st birthday of Julius Petri, who invented the petri dish. Check out his  Google doodle.)

DNA and How to Extract It

DNA and How to Extract It This past March, a few days after my birthday, I spent a Saturday teaching three iterations of a three-hour-long class called Hands-on Introduction to DNA! to seventh through ninth graders at Spark, a day-long assortment of classes for middle and high school students organized by the MIT student group ESP (Educational Studies Program) and taught by MIT students and community members. ESP seems to contain most of my Random Hall friends as well as the wonderful Anna H. ’14, who has blogged about teaching ESP classes here and here. This year’s 266 Spark classes included classes you might expect, such as Computational Language Theory and Extreme Math, and classes you might not expect, such as How to Plan and Execute Covert Operations in Deep Cover and The Game Mechanics of Pokémon. There was Synthetic Biology, Projective Geometry, Chocolate Tasting, and Slide Rules. There was Crayfish: Take It Apart!, Sea Urchin: Take It Apart!, and their antithesis, Put Together the Pile of Junk! My Spark class revolved around a DNA extraction protocol that my little brother Max tried as a science fair project. We started out with a short introductory lecture about DNA and then we isolated the genetic material from peas, corn, and strawberries, which was an awesome, colorful, goopy mess. If DNA is nothing new, feel free to skip to the video and the extraction protocol, or just the extraction protocol. From the beginningâ€" Our bodies are an ecosystem of hundreds of trillions of tiny bacteria and tens of trillions of our own cells, small bags of stuff that do a lot of work to keep us alive. We are interested in the nucleus of the cell, which encloses the DNA. Your DNA is a story, uniquely yours, that you read out as you live and eventually pass on to your children. Instead of paper, it is written on a long string using only four letters. Each word in the story is three letters long. The words form sentences called genes, which, alone or in groups, determine the traits you start with, for example your hair color, your eye color, and your blood type. Though your cells have diverse specializations, your DNA is identical in every cell of your body. It contains all the information needed to build you up and then maintain you; it determines how you will grow and develop within your environment and to a potentially large extent it dictates how and when you will eventually break apart and die. A priority in current research is deciphering our DNA and the DNA of other species for use in medicine, agriculture, and history. The hope is that by learning how to read our DNA, we will be able to better understand genetic disorders and detect them before they appear, improve crop yield, and understand how we got to be human. Genomics is a new and quickly evolving field with a huge capacity to extend and improve human life. For the most part, DNA carries out its action through proteins. A gene is first transcribed into less stable messenger RNA. Interrupting, or intronic, information is cut out of the messenger RNA and the remaining RNA molecule is sent out of the nucleus and into the endoplasmic reticulum. In the endoplasmic reticulum the messenger RNA is copied again, this time into protein. This final translation is done by transfer molecules, which contain the code for translation, and ribosomes, which line up the messenger RNA and the transfer molecules so that they can interact. The transfer molecules, called tRNAs, are like three-pronged forks. On one end are three letters from the original DNA sequence, a word, written in RNA. The other end holds the corresponding protein monomer, the amino acid. The amino acid that corresponds to each word varies depending on the species. The ribosome lines up the transfer molecule forks with the attached protein monomers along the RNA. The amino acids are conn ected to form a protein, after which the transfer molecules are reused and the messenger RNA is degraded. The cell sends the completed protein product to the Golgi apparatus, the cell’s post office, and the Golgi packages the protein and sends it to its destination inside or outside the cell. The protein then carries out the function prescribed by its encoding DNA, whether it is the keratin in your hair or an antibody in your immune system. Meanwhile the original DNA is safe in the nucleus, in two copies. It never leaves, and it is split apart and replicated only when the entire cell is replicated. The human genome is written in about 3 billion base pairs, or letters. If you stretch out the DNA from one nonreplicating cell, it will be about two meters long (3 billion base pairs in 23 chromosomes · two of each chromosome in the cell · 0.34 nanometers between consecutive base pairs). If you concatenate the DNA from all of your cells and stretch it out as one string, it will reach the sun and back 67 to 333 times, or the moon and back 25,000 to 125,000 times (2 meters of DNA in each cell · about 10 to 50 trillion cells in the human body ÷ 300 million kilometers from the Earth to the sun and back, or 800,000 kilometers from the Earth to the moon and back). In the cell, the DNA is wound tightly around proteins called histones, and for this reason, even though we will try to degrade the proteins, the DNA will precipitate in clumps rather than clean strings when we extract it from a vegetable or fruit. Here’s all that in vivid, computer animated action: This video is from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Australia. They have other equally mesmerizing and informative animations in high definition on their web site, and you should go watch them, too, if you enjoyed this one. While we watched this video we set up the first steps of the DNA extraction protocol, which contains a convenient 10-minute break. Below is the protocol we used. The students wanted to know what each step does to the DNA, so I’ll try to explain it here as well. Materials: A blender. A mesh strainer with very small holes. If you are alone: A clear cup. It looks really cool if you use a champagne glass. A wooden BBQ skewer or something else with which to stir. One eighth teaspoon table salt. About one cup of cold water. A pinch of meat tenderizer or contact lens solution. (We used meat tenderizer.) Two tablespoons liquid laundry detergent. Use clear laundry detergent. Colored laundry detergent will overpower the color of the fruit or vegetable. About half a cup of something that was once alive. It’s okay if it’s frozen. We tried strawberries, split peas, and corn. The kids were most excited about the strawberries. I thought the peas looked coolest. The frozen corn was not very exciting for anybody. A small jug of rubbing alcohol with at least 95% alcohol content. If you are with 10-20 friends: A bag of small, clear, disposable cups. The more translucent cups are worth the extra money. A bag of wooden BBQ skewers or something else with which to stir. One container of table salt from your kitchen. Gallon jug of cold water, which you brought to school empty and filled with cold tap water in the bathroom before class. Two small shakers of meat tenderizer. You won’t use much of this, but it’s better to have two so that they can both be passed around at the same time. A small bottle of clear liquid laundry detergent. A bag or two or three of something that was once alive, like a fruit or a vegetable. It’s okay if it’s frozen. Several jugs of rubbing alcohol with about 95% alcohol content. You’ll need about as much rubbing alcohol as vegetable or fruit, which might be a lot. (Weird looks at the check-out line come with the vast, yellow and green polka-dotted territory of being awesome.) Leave time to potentially stop by multiple CVSes. Among the materials, rubbing alcohol (isopropyl alcohol) can cause irritation to eyes, skin, or the respiratory system. Isopropyl alcohol vapors can irritate the eyes and the respiratory system, contact with eyes can cause damage and burns, and ingestion or inhalation can cause vomiting, drowsiness, and death. The lethal dose is about one cup. It’s unlikely you’ll be able to drink very much, but if you do you will die. You also don’t want to eat the laundry detergent or get it in your eyes. Procedure: Combine in the blender one part vegetable or fruit, two parts cold water, and the salt. If you’re doing this alone, it’ll be half a cup of vegetable or fruit, one cup water, and one eighth teaspoon salt. If you’re doing this with a group you’ll want to fill the blender and scale up the salt appropriately. Blend on high for 15 to 25 seconds.  It is not important that the water be cold, but it is helpful. Most things, including DNA, tend to be less soluble at lower temperatures. (The exception is proteins, which start denaturing, or losing their structure, at higher temperatures, exposing their hydrophobic parts and forcing them to clump together to avoid surrounding water.) The salt, NaCl, dissolves in the water, separating into the charged ions Na+ and Cl. The Na+ neutralizes the negatively charged DNA, allowing the DNA strands to clump together rather than be repelled by each other’s negative charge. Balance your mesh strainer over a clear cup and pour the liquid contents of the blender through the strainer and into the cup. The cup should be at most half full. If you’re doing this with a group you should divide the contents of the blender equally among the group and line the cups up on the table for the next step. Keep in mind that the goop that comes out of the blender earlier has more DNA in it than the goop that comes out of the blender later. Add two tablespoons of clear liquid laundry detergent to each cup of vegetable goop. If you’re doing this with a group you can use the bottommost line in one of the plastic cups to measure out a very approximate two tablespoons.  The laundry detergent disrupts the membrane enclosing the cell and potentially the nuclear membrane enclosing the DNA. Distribute a vegetable goop cup and a BBQ skewer to each person. Everyone should stir gently and then let the solution stand for 10 minutes. Now is a good time to watch the above 7-minute video. Pass around the meat tenderizer and the rubbing alcohol. Each person should add a pinch of meat tenderizer to their cup and stir gently again, and then add about as much rubbing alcohol as there is vegetable mixture. The rubbing alcohol makes the DNA clump together, since the DNA is less soluble in rubbing alcohol (or any other alcohol) than in water. The meat tenderizer contains protease, an enzyme that degrades the proteins that accompany the DNA. The DNA will appear as white goop on the surface of the green or red goop. You can spin it onto the BBQ skewer like cotton candy, but I think it looks prettier and much less gross if it’s left in the cup.  Here are some photos my students took at the end of the process. The fruits and vegetables used, clockwise from the top left, are strawberries, peas, corn, and mixed berry, all frozen. That no one photographed the DNA extracted from the corn is, I think, additional testament to frozen corn not being very interesting.       Afterwards, I opened the floor to questions and short chalk talks and we ended up going in very interesting directions. I almost wish I’d had an older class so that students could teach each other more than I talked at them, but at the same time it seems like younger people ask more questions and their questions are often more interesting. Some of the things we talked about were transposons, viruses, cancer, stem cells, ribosomes and the RNA world, DNA sequencing technologies, sex chromosomes and their evolution, alternative splice sites, and the evolutionary benefits of aging and death. I got some emails in the following days expressing interest in biology and asking about things we talked about in class, which was such a wonderful feeling. If you have time and a presentation at your local elementary school seems like something you would enjoy, you should ask about trying it. A few weeks ago my mom repeated the presentation and the DNA extraction with my little brother’s fifth grade class, and apparently they asked even more interesting questions. It seems like elementary school teachers are usually thrilled to have alumni or parents present about what theyve been up to in high school and college and beyond. If you are in middle or high school and youd like to learn more about genomics and DNA, there are free resources online that you should check out: edx.org Free online courses from MIT, Harvard, and other excellent schools that mirror actual undergraduate courses, with labs, graded tests, online real-human interaction, and the possibility of earning a certificate. In particular, you might be interested in: 7.00x  Introduction to Biology: The Secret of Life,  taught by Dr. Eric Lander, from the Human Genome Project 6.00x  Introduction to Computer Science and Programming ocw.mit.edu Free material from many, many MIT classes, including video lectures. In particular, you might be interested in: Biology highlights for high school 7.01SC Fundamentals of Biology, also taught by Dr. Eric Lander, along with Dr. Robert Weinberg, who made huge contributions to cancer research (both won 3 million dollars this past February for their research) 6.00SC Introduction to Computer Science and Programming codecademy.com Free interactive programming classes online. wikipedia.org/wiki/genomics Excellent introductory information. Follow the links! If you have questions, if you do a presentation, or if you try a DNA extraction, alone or with a class, and you comment or email me about what happened it would make me very happyâ€"especially if you are adventurous and try a DNA extraction from something new. (Somewhat relatedly, today is the 161st birthday of Julius Petri, who invented the petri dish. Check out his  Google doodle.)