DNA Sweets

Well thought I'd start saying something actually about lessons today.

My biology lesson was probably the best because we had a student teacher and she thought she'd start with something fun for once :)

We are studying DNA at the moment, so she decided to let us make our own DNA double helix shape, - OUT OF SWEETS
I thought I'd write out the instructions for any of you with time on your hands
You need

• 2 different coloured pieces of thick licorice
• 8 miget jems (4 different colours - 2 of each)
• 4 cocktail sticks
• needle and thread

Method

1. Cut both the pieces of licorice into 8 pieces
2. Use the needle and thread to sew 2 strings of 8 alternating coloured pieces of licorice together
3. Seperate the miget gems into 4 sets of 2 colours (e.g 2x red and blue and 2x yellow and green)
4. Use the cocktail sticks to spike each pair of miget gems - one at each end
5. Now spike each end of the cocktail stick into each pair of ONE of the coloured licorice pieces
6. Tie your thread at each end and twist gentaly to make a double helix shape

Congratulations You've Made DNA!

So this was a good lesson, the point of it was showing us that the miget gems, reprensting bases of the DNA only ever paired together, i.e Red only ever paired with Blue and Yellow only ever paired with Green (A-T and C-G)
Also that the bases only attached to the sugar (represented by what ever colour licorice you used to attach the cocktail sticks to)

Pictures will be incuded at a later date hopefully :)