I really like to do some experiments at home. As you can see, my 'equipment' is far from professional, but it's good enough for little tests at home.
Recently I discovered a way to isolate your own DNA out of saliva. I wasn't expecting it was that easy, but it actually was. I’m not quite sure about the accuracy of this method because I was not able to prove it yet. There might be other molecules that are isolated out of the saliva as well. Since I’m not sure about this, I see this experiment as something to do for fun, not for real ‘research.'
How to isolate DNA out of saliva
To begin, make a saturated kitchen salt solution. You can do this by taking half a glass of water in a glass and add the salt little by little. Make sure to stir the solution after each added portion. The solution is saturated when the salt isn’t dissolvable anymore. You reached this point when there are salt crystals on the bottom of the glass.
Take a small amount of the solution in your mouth and rinse your mouth with it for at least ten seconds. The large amount of salt is necessary to loosen the cells in mucous membrane in the mouth. Yes, the amount of salt isn’t nice. It actually tastes really bad, but it’s worth it for science, right? After the ten seconds, which probably felt like forever, you can finally spit everything out. Catch everything in a clean glass or beaker.
Then add a small amount of dish soap and stir the solution. The dish soap will open the cells, so the DNA is free to move through the solution. Now take some seventy percent (or more) alcohol (ethanol) and a pipette. Slowly add the alcohol to the saliva-saltwater mixture drop by drop. The alcohol will make all the DNA molecules stick together. When enough alcohol is added, you should see some white stripes appear. This should look like the picture above. The black arrow indicates a white stripe. At some point there won’t appear any new stripes. This means you made all the DNA visible. You can now take out these ‘threads’ and put them on a surface to dry, where they will form little chunks.
Congratulations! This is your DNA!
My results
I was able to take out five chunks of DNA. The chunks look big in this picture, but they are quite small. After drying completely, they were only a third of the size shown here. I don’t know what to do with this DNA now, so I’ll just keep it as a reminder to this fun experiment. Maybe I can put it under a microscope and see what it looks like.
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