The Hunt for DNA

Indiana Jane must have permission to work with each bone. When she is ready to extract DNA, she cuts a small piece of bone or tooth and crushes it into powder. It looks a little like flour you can bake with.

The bone must be cut before it can be crushed to analyze the bone powder. Click for more detail.

In the bone powder are millions of bone cells and millions of cells from other organisms, including bacteria and parasites. A copy of the DNA is located inside every single cell.

In the bone powder is a mix of dirt, bone cells and cells from bacteria, parasites, or other microbes. Image by Maria Nieves-Colón.

Next, she needs to crack open the cell walls so that the DNA spills out. A special enzyme does this job. It is a lot like cracking open an egg into a bowl, except that it is all microscopic.

But DNA is not the only thing inside a cell. When the cell walls are cracked, other cell parts come out as well. To separate the DNA from the other parts of the cell, the next step is the cleaning step. Indiana Jane must capture only the DNA but leave all of the “dirt” behind.

When the DNA is clean, it is ready for analysis.  Indiana Jane hopes we have captured more than just human DNA. This is where she hopes the microbe DNA will be. 

Skull section image via Wikimedia Commons by Phyzome.