Today's first installment is DNA Extraction Science Fair Projects for Young Scientists.
Students that are interested in entering the field of medicine need to master the sciences early on in their school career. One activity that can help students to enhance their mastery of science subjects is to work on science fair projects. Since they are interested in medicine, then students that are on a fast track to a career in medicine will benefit from completing DNA science fair projects.
Project #1 - Decay and DNA Extraction
DNA science fair projects come in several varieties. One option that you have is to see if the decay of organic material impacts the quality of the DNA that can be extracted from the material. For this project students will need supplies for DNA extraction, a sample of organic material that is relatively fresh, a sample of organic material that has undergone a week of decay, a sample of organic material that has undergone several weeks of decay and a microscope.
The hypothesis for this science fair project is that the more decay organic material experiences the more degraded the DNA will be. The independent variable in this hypothesis, or the part of the experiment that will be manipulated, is the amount of decay that the sample is exposed to. The dependent variable, or the part that will be measured, will be the quality of the DNA. The quality of DNA will be measured in terms of how complete the DNA extraction is and if there are any holes in the DNA sequence.
To test this hypothesis students will need to first extract DNA from the fresh sample. This will act as the control experiment and it will create a baseline of data to make comparisons against. The next experiment will extract DNA from the sample with one week of decay, the second test experiment will extract DNA from the sample with two weeks of decay, and so on. The results will be analyzed and compared against the control to see if fresh samples produce better DNA samples than decayed samples.
Project #2 - DNA Comparisons
In this DNA science fair project the student will be comparing the differences between two populations. The first population of test subjects will be bean plants and the second population of test subjects will be carrots. The goal of this project will be to identify the differences in DNA sequences between root vegetables and legumes.
The hypothesis for this DNA science fair project will be that the best place to extract DNA from a vegetable is its leaf system. In this hypothesis the variable that will be manipulated is the location of the DNA extraction point. The variable that will be measured will be the quality of the DNA that is extracted.
Testing this hypothesis will involve several steps. First of all a baseline of data will be created by extracting DNA from both the carrot and the bean plants from their leaf system. Next DNA will be extracted from the seeds of both plants and from the root system of both plants. The results will be compared and the student will need to determine if the leaves of a plant really provide the best DNA extraction point.
Conclusion
DNA extraction science fair projects are a good first step towards a career in medicine. Students can gradually intensify the complexity of their projects as they progress from grade level to grade level. They can also focus on areas of medicine that they are most interested in such as genetics, sports medicine and toxicology.
A big thank you to Super Science Fair Projects for writing this post for The Homeschool Desk. To learn more, please visit the Super Science Fair Projects website. And be sure to stay tuned for next week's Science Fair Project installment!
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