Genetic workshop — by Leestream SchoolLast Thursday Miss Allan took the Year 7 & 8 students to Otago University Biotech Laboratory for a Genetics Workshop.
Last Thursday Jade, Charlotte and I went to the Otago University Biochemistry Lab to solve a murder mystery. When we got there with Miss Allan it was pouring with rain. We went up the street a little bit and met up with Fairfield School who we were solving the mystery with. When we went into the lab we were working in, outside the door we saw a dead victim lying on the floor. Once we got inside and found our seat we had to put yellow lab coats on.Constable Gillian explained that one of the scientists had been stabbed with a pipette and that DNA had been collected from 3 suspects, the victim and the murder weapon. It was our job to test the DNA to discover the murderer.
We got given a pipette each and were told how to put the tips on. For about 10 minutes we played with them, transferring coloured water into our small containers. Once we got the hang of it, we got into groups to do a test called Gel Electrophoresis. We pulled out a wide toothed comb that had made small holes in the gel. We now had to use our pipette to suck up the small DNA samples and put them into the small holes in the gel. We all had a go putting in a different sample that were ordered A, B, C, D and E. Once we had done that we put the lid of our container on, there was a negative and a positive alligator clip that we had to connect up to the machine and turn the power on. DNA has a negative charge so we were passing a positive charge through our gel to separate the DNA. Now we had to wait about half an hour.
While we were waiting we did a task looking at mutations in fruit flies. We had to look through a microscope and identify the mutation we could see at 5 different stations of flies.
Half an hour later we got to take our gel out of the liquid. We took it over to another machine that would use ultraviolet light to take a photo of our DNA. Once we got our photo and glued them into our book we compared the DNA of the murder weapon to the suspects samples. The murderer was Alex, one of the helpers in the lab, she got handcuffed and taken away.
We had a good time, it was fun.
By Ben. J
By Leestream School
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Genetic workshop — by Leestream School
Genetic workshop — by Leestream School
Genetic workshop — by Leestream School
Genetic workshop — by Leestream School
Genetic workshop — by Leestream School
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