PCR your DNA Workshop

How do we go from showing the existence of DNA (strawberries, soap and alcohol) to the popular imagery of DNA gels?
This is a consolidated practical go-to version of workshops we have done as Hack-a-Taq and Citizen Science @ Bern. It highlights also the generic lab equipment. You can find similar protocols in other places. This is our documentation.

Workflow

With a group of 15-20 people with everyone participating, we see that this workflow can easily take the entire day.
You can stop and continue another time - after the DNA extraction and after the PCR

1. Get Samples
2. Extract the DNA (PAUSE)
3. Amplify the gene of your interest using PCR (PAUSE)
4. Separate the PCR products by agarose gel electrophoresis
5. Visualize the PCR products (your amplified DNA bits)