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Gel Electrophoresis Lab

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Agarose gel electrophoresis is an easy and common technique of separating and analyzing DNA. The main objective of this lab is to find the sire of the offspring using gel electrophoresis. Gel electrophoresis is used in laboratories to isolate charged molecules like DNA, RNA, and particular proteins according to their specific size. The charged molecules travel through the gel when an electric current is spread across it. The electric current is applied across the gel so that the ends of the gel have a positive charge and the other end has a negative charge. Migration, in gel electrophoresis, is the movement of charged molecules. The charged molecules migrate towards its opposite charge. A molecule like DNA with a negative charge will be drawn towards the positive end. Because DNA and RNA are negatively charged molecules, they …show more content…

The gel consists of a penetrable matrix through which molecules can travel when triggered by an electric current. Smaller molecules migrate through the gel more quickly and consequently travel further. Larger fragments that migrate slowly travel a shorter distance. The result is that the specific molecules are separated by size in electrophoresis. A short tandem repeat (STR) in DNA is a quantity of polymorphisms that occurs when a pattern of two or more nucleotides is repeated and the recurrent sequences are directly adjacent to each other. Short tandem repeats are also called microsatellites. STR’s are considered to be small genetic markers found in genomic DNA that consists of two to six base pair sequence that is repeated one after the other five to 100 times. STR’s are used to determine paternity by matching STR with offspring. If the STR is not from the mother, then is has to be from the father. A lab instructor provides a micropipette, which is used to extract given DNA

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