How does our body know to grow a head and not an arm? How are humans and bananas related? What makes a living rabbit different from a rock that’s not alive? It’s all in the DNA!

These were some of the questions we asked and discussed in the garden. In thinking about the deep origins of DNA, we discussed the hydrothermal vent theory (1). It’s crazy to think that there may not have been “life” as we know it on the planet before that! We also talked about how our genes control our body plan (2) and how they can be very similar or different to create the variation of living things in the world.

Our young scientists then went on to explore what it meant to be told knowledge vs. experimenting to see knowledge for our own eyes. To SEE DNA, we did a DNA extraction on strawberries in the garden (3). We thought about how crazy it is that this goopy white DNA is life’s instruction book! A fun activity you can do at home too ~

Jan

Some heated scientific discussions amongst our future knowledge makers ~~~

Our budding scientists with their DNA extractions!

1. https://www.nature.com/articles/nrmicro1991

2. https://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/basics/hoxgenes

3. https://www.genome.gov/Pages/Education/Modules/StrawberryExtractionInstructions.pdf