5 minute DNA Extraction in a Shot Glass

Despite its exotic-sounding name, DNA is ubiquitous - it can be found in every cell of every living thing and almost everywhere on the planet. Nonetheless, we rarely come face-to-face with the molecule itself - and it's not because DNA is difficult to find or isolate! In this instructable, we'll show you how to isolate your own DNA with little more than some dish soap, table salt, high-proof alcohol, a shot glass, and a bit of your own saliva.

It only takes a couple of minutes, and after you've isolated your own DNA, you can either drink it back down in a tasty "DNA shot" (great party trick) or better yet, purify it further for more analysis*.

Materials & Set Up

• 1/4 of a shot glass full of your saliva
• several drops of dish soap (look for sodium laurel sulfate in the ingredients)
• a pinch of table salt (1/16 of a teaspoon)
• some contact-lens cleaning solution, meat tenderizer, or pineapple juice (optional)
• Ice-cold 120-proof+ liquor (overproof rum works well)

SAFETY NOTE:
The chemicals used in this experiment are "everyday" household items and are not particularly dangerous. Nonetheless, exercise extra caution and think twice if you decide to consume your DNA shot and ABSOLUTELY do not substitue rubbing alcohol, isopropyl alcohol, or any other non-consumable alcohol for the overproof rum we used. Besides using "denatured' alcohol, the other potential safety concern is the dishsoap added to the mixture. A couple drops won't hurt you, but if you are concerned about it, feel free to leave it out.

This instructable was produced by DIYbio - an organization for amateur biotechnologists. Visit diybio.org for more information.

EDIT: Some DIYbioers are developing a simple gel box and a gel box on steroids. We should have some instructables put together for them before Dec 08. If you are interested in helping, please join the DIYbio google group!

Step 1: Salivation...GO!

1/4 of a shot glass of saliva is harder to produce than you might think! Work your tongue against your cheeks and teeth as you think of a big juicy grilled steak / tofu cube / dim sum, or Muffins / baked cookies . I had to spit about 5 times to fill the glass 1/4th full.

If you are making the DNA shot for someone else, be sure to let them know where the DNA came from.

Comments

[Derpancakes]

Is there an "under-21" way to do this?

[danbemp]

the 70% or 91% isopropanol you can buy at any supermarket should be fine, just don't drink it : )

[Broom]

Any chance I'll get superpowers, if I expose the shot of DNA to some radiation? Maybe 10 seconds in the microwave...

[JuCo]

not to be too crude, but the implications of "5 minute dna extraction in a shot glass" had me giggling for a moment.

[gogoplata]

We did this in biology a few years ago with strawberries. Is there any way to do this and extract the DNA from white blood cells?

[Organiks]

A more important question is can you isolate white blood cells? That is far more difficult than ethanol precipitation

[Shut Up Now]

i did this with strawberries too. oh, and we used freezer cold methynol. we used a microscope to look at it after. we saw some double helixes.

[sdowney-forsythe]

Um. BS. If you saw double helices, you were hallucinating.

[Lithium Rain]

Yeah, you need an electron microscope for those...

[ste5442]

Wow - that must have been some microscope ;-)

PCBPolice

[Shut Up Now]

no, just a typical school grade light-microscope.

[Earths_hope]

what grade? I did it in grade 5 with strawberries and used methalated spirits

[OldManMahoney]

lol

[gahaga]

There are no White blood cells in Strawberries :-) But if you want DNA from WBC's, you might consider following this protocol using puss from an acne lesion (a puss filled zit, or other source of puss) instead of spit. Otherwise, you'll need to get some blood, separate the Red blood cells (very easy really) and then you'll have mostly WBCs. It depends on how "purely WBC" the DNA needs to be. Why do you want to do this?

[gogoplata]

I was just interested to see if this could be used for some amateur research or something. I think the DNA would need to be from only WBC.

[gahaga]

MediaTech sells a product call Lymphocyte Separation mediumLymphocyte Separation medium (cat # 25-072-CI, 100 mL for <$20). That will do the trick, if you're starting with whole blood

[gogoplata]

Thank you. I will look into that.

[jobard]

Can I use Absinthe instead of overproof rum?

[jschroedl]

Ew. cool project. Would there be anything interesting to see under a microscope?

[bears0]

 i dont think you can see dna under a microscope if you could it would have to magnify like one centillion time

oh and yes centillion is a number it has 330 zeros
thats a lot

[crysisatutz]

No, magnification of M=10^8 should be sufficient. Neutron scattering could do a good job for regarding DNA molecules.

[Plaid Demon]

lol

[rocket master]

If you chew your cheeks, you get more DNA.

[McGrep]

Fascinating. Why had I no idea this could be done so easily?

[chibibunny713]

 Hey - how long can these last for, What liquid can I preserve mine in (indefinitely), and How do you dye them?

[cheesekake22]

we did this in Project STEM and you can just swish salt water and it works fine.

[Nitsuji]

Canida is almost right. Pineapple, kiwi, and papaya all contain "proteases," enzymes that break-down proteins. However, each fruit contains a pretty different enzyme: pineapple has bromelain, kiwi has actinidin, figs have ficin, and papaya has papain. 

[niwrad]

hahaha nice trick! I did this with onions!!

[hamado]

really nice..im going to try it right now
wish it works...

[CapnTac]

What if you could clone yourself with it? That would be shweet.

[kid123]

you can do this with rubbing alcohol

[stonehenge360]

yes but drinking rubbing alcohol will kill you

[zhou777]

yes, but you don't have to drink it. 

[nrepak]

i dont know how much I would want to drink contacts lens solution considering what it does to the bowels

[bears0]

 we did that with spinach one time

[SlashDev]

did you just drink dish washing detergent and/or meat tenderizer? bleah :P

[awang8]

Steak contains meat tenderizer...

[minime12358]

also, your plate must contain traces of dish washing detergent.....

[DrWeird117]

Hmm...What if...Nah.

[duckythescientist]

If you are not consuming the shot, could isopropyl alcohol be substituted for the ethanol?

[duckythescientist]

Never mind... I just answered my question with more research! It will work; I just won't drink it (I'm underage anyway).

[ElectricUmbrella]

Very, very intresting! Nicely done! You mentioned staining it - how?

[Nebraska G]

That's what I was wondering! Is there anyway to safely keep the genetic material overnight and then transport it to school for more scrutiny?

[Nebraska G]

sorry i messed up on my post i was responding to jschroedl's post lol

[Hard_plann]

Thanks I was looking for some thing like this for a science project and you saved my grades so I used it and it worked very well THANKS

[lonely]

wow

cool project

I really enjoyed

and I hope to do it in the future

thanx very much

[ste5442]

Hi Macowell,
You mention seperating the DNA into its different sized fragments - how do you do this? The link takes me to a page with some fairly detailed explanation but the picture at the end (which shows the results) is tiny and cannot see anything :-(

PCBPolice

[ralegg]

Now all we need is a homemade PCR machine and then I can start applying for grant money! haha

[klee27x]

Ok, guys - when you first read this title, did a dirty joke cross your mind? Or am I the only pervert? :P

[INSTRUCTUBAL]

oh goodness.

[Shut Up Now]

lol.

[RedneckAsian]

i dont get it

[eltro]

awsome dude but got a doubt wont d lense cleaner remove proteins frm my eyes ? lol

[Iridium7]

Does AJax contain Sodium Laural Sulfate?

[macowell]

Epinions has a post that lists the ingredients in Ajax Antibacterial Orange dishwashing soap:

Active Ingredient: Triclosan
Other Ingredients: Water, Magnesium and/or Sodium Dodecylbenzenesulfaonate, ammoniym laureth sulfate, Sodium xylenessulfonate, SD alcohol 3-A, Laurel polyglucose, Laurylamidoproptlamine oxide, Magnesium sulfate, Sodium bisulfate, fragrance, Prntasodium pentetate, DNDN Hydantoine, D&C Orange No 4.

I'm not sure how accurate this is - I don't thinkg "ammoniym" is a word, for instance, but suffice to say Ajax will probably work.

[Iridium7]

sweet thanx.

[RoyalPayne]

Sorry, I couldn't get past, or thru, the first step. Thanks to CameronSS for the strawberry tip. Now this is doable

[macowell]

In my experience the procedure works well with about a quarter of a shot glass of spit or more. This actually takes a while to produce, like 10 minutes. Maybe you weren't using enough?

[phipho]

I work in a very conservative high school is there a substitute for the 120 proof alcohol?

[macowell]

Yes, any "rubbing alcohol" you can get at a drug store will probably be even more effective, as well as cheaper - but do not drink it.

[jdr03272]

This is pretty interesting, however, unless my 150 credits of biology over the last four years have failed me, you are not precipitating out DNA. When this (more or less exact) procedure is done in a lab, we might choose to do it to a plasmid prep containing a very cloudy bacterial culture which has lots and lots of cells. When this procedure is run on a 10ml+ culture, you get about 300ul of DNA, much less than the amount of "DNA" your getting out of about 5ml of saliva. Yes there are cells in saliva but VERY few and the way DNA is recovered on shows like CSI is to do this procedure and then amplify the extremely small amount of DNA with PCR, then run it out on a gel. In plain english, there could not possibly be enough cells in your saliva sample to yield the macroscopic amounts of DNA you are twirling around the toothpick. Instead, what you have probably precipitated is Mucin, the proteinaceous secretion which confers viscosity to saliva. Mucin will still precipitate even with the proteases added. am i wrong?

[macowell]

I suspect you are correct. It would be interesting to try and stain just the mucin to test your hypothesis, or more generally to just stain protein. I've tried adding some methylene blue in the past, but it just seems to stain everything generally. What we need is a gel box and reliable materials to run gels. Then we could actually purify any DNA present. I wonder how sensitive SybrSafe dye is? It might stain much smaller quantities of DNA than a miniprep produces.

[jdr03272]

Good idea. I've never used SybrSafe, but there are a few good DNA stains out there like BioRad's FastBlast DNA stain.

[leahbuechley]

very cool!

[thematthatter]

Could you get better yield by using body fluid that had more DNA? Like blood or something

[Postscript624]

You can also get some nice yields with fruit or veggies. Onions and bananas work well, you just gotta puree them a bit first. Also, dogs have a higher chromosome number, so if you have pets you might get a higher yield with doggie drool.

[thematthatter]

Dog drool, gross!

[spasysheep]

Blood contains very little DNA as the cells in it are mostly red blood cells which contain no nucleus and therefore no DNA

[deathcrew]

Yeah Can we just Blood Instead of saliva?. i would really like to know that =]

[macowell]

This Instructable was not optimized for producing a high yield of DNA. It was designed to be as fast and easy as possible.

If the goal was to maximize the yield, I would start by finding an easy way to at least qualitatively measure roughly how much DNA had been isolated - this would be useful for evaluating different extraction protocols (70% alcohol or 91% or... etc). I thought a lot about this when I was developing this instructable and have not been able to identify any particularly easy ways to analyze the DNA. For instance, methylene blue is easy to get at any pet store, and does stain DNA, but it also stains other stuff as well.

My plan is to develop an instructable for building and using a gel box, and at the same time an optimized DNA extraction instructable for getting DNA to analyze with the gel.

Lastly, I don't know anything about handling blood. I would strongly encourage anyone who is interested in using blood to research the safety concerns and consider disposal concerns before doing anything. If anyone does this, consider telling us about it in the diybio google groupdiybio google group.

[macowell]

Additionally, Red Blood Cells eject their nucleus during their development and probably don't contain much DNA at all, if any. Other cells in your blood might, but overall I doubt it would be an ideal tissue sample.

[thematthatter]

what about ....

^_semen

[irinazcona]

yeah, blood cells don't have DNA.

[Saint_Awesome]

White blood cells have a nucleus containing DNA.

[ChrysN]

We usually get 5cc tube of whole blood for DNA extraction to run clinical diagnostic tests, although they are mostly PCR based tests.

[junits15]

i did something like this in the 7th grade, execpt with an onion, and real chemicals.

[bitterbug]

As exposed to fake chemicals? :P Sounds like you go to a pretty cool school. We didn't have anything this cool in 7th grade back when I was in it :)

[junits15]

well as oposed to dish soap and contact lense cleaner! XD We actully had to go to a lab, it took the about three months to get us permission to use the lab because in real life you have to be 18 to use a lab. the chemicals that we used, were pretty much the same execpt they were mork concentrated, Ex: we used ice cold ethanol instaind of booze XD

[brixon21]

I used to work at University doing research on radioactive DNA, and this is way more simple....haha Great Instructable.

[tictac24]

Wait, so you drank it even with the dish soap and contact lens cleaning solution in it!?!?

[cfuse]

I'm pretty sure that the LD50 for either soap or lens cleaner would exceed his stomach capacity (and certainly that of a shot glass). The most toxic part of the drink is the alcohol.

[macowell]

Good point. 7th Generation Free & Clear dish soap MSDS - need to consume like 1/2 your body weight for toxic effects.

I couldn't find an MSDS for the contact lens cleaner. I think you're right; the alcohol is by far the most toxic part of the mixture.

[macowell]

yep. it's only a few drops of each - probably no more than you are exposed to when you add the drops to your eyes or wash your dishes in your sink (if you don't have a dishwasher).

[mike256]

I just did this with my kids (4 and 7). they had a blast. I used the method from the macgyver project which was linked from step 6. I plan on making the gel box and finding out what fun it will be. I used the regular buffer (water, salt and baking soda) and did a swish and spit with it then added the soap.

The hardest part was trying to explain what DNA was to the kids. just how small the nucleolus of a cell is and how we got it out. I used rubbing alcohol to precipitate the DNA strands. all in all it was a ton of fun and the kids (and I) learned bunch from this. great instructable. one of my favorites by far. kudos to you sir :)

[schimmi]

we just did this in biology!

[starburstdragoon]

Wow. Perfect Instructable

[iMac]

Is there anything cool you can do with the dna?

[stasterisk]

Awesome! Can't wait to see more!

[Browncoat]

I can't decide if this is more bizarre or more awesome... :)

[Bran]

Yeah, we just did this in Biology with strawberries. Isopropyl alcohol works as well. Oh, nice sideburns!

[rickyd!]

sounds like a cool bar bet

[canida]

Nice!

[lingdong]

Kiwifruit juice can be used in place of the meat tenderiser. Just a tip

[canida]

Pineapple, kiwi, and papaya all contain the same proteolytic enzyme, papain. Good stuff.

[LinuxH4x0r]

Now make a gel electrophoresis setup!

[kelseymh]

Yes, indeed! In the intro, Mr. macowell wrote,

• See our instructables on building your own gel electrophoresis box and running a gel with your own dna.
  

It would have been nice if he had provided links to those. Visiting his Web site, I found only a blog entry, not an actual procedure.

[macowell]

Ah, you caught me! Ok, so we are actively working on building a gel box and running a gel (successfully) and should have those instructables done before December 08. I added some links to discussions about them at the end of the intro.

[kelseymh]

Sounds great! And thanks for the edit :-) I had read MAKE's article about the procedure, so seeing a step-by-step implementation will be quite nice. The idea that "anyone" can do this stuff, including PCR, at home is just astounding.

[iPodGuy]

Cool!

[sonic_dan]

yeah i did this in my university lab last year with onion dna. the lecturer did mention that you could do it at home with vodka and stuff, but although i admit i'm veeery nerdy, it doesn't stretch this far... hmmm.

[CameronSS]

We did a similar lab in Biology a couple years ago. The main difference was that we squeezed overripe strawberry juice out, and extracted the DNA from that. We were using denatured alcohol, which is just fine if you are not planning to drink it. My moronic biology teacher couldn't tell me why rubbing alcohol wouldn't work, so I tried it when I got home. There is currently a small test tube of apple DNA sitting on my desk.