Introducing students to DNA - Identifying nutritional plants in a simple tried and tested laboratory experiment

In this paper we report on a practical experiment, containing isolation, purification, and characterization of plant DNA, which is designed to give students unexperienced in DNA handling and molecular biology a glimpse of the field. Based on well established procedures, genomic DNA of a nutritional crop is isolated, and a non-coding region of chloroplast DNA is amplified by use of PCR with universal primers. The origin of the sample is revealed by the size of the amplified fragment and in case of indistinguishable fragment sizes of wheat and barley by selective digestion with a suitable restriction endonuclease.