Minimum ethanol % to precipitate strawberry DNA?

[william...@gmail.com]

We're going to make some DNA daiquiris for the London Hackspace spacewarming party this Sunday 12th May. The original recipe calls for a 75% rum, but not wanting to spend £80 on alcohol, we're looking at a cheaper 63% rum.

What's the minimum % you can use, and will yield be lower at lower ethanol concentrations?

[leaking pen]

From what I recall, temp is just as important, and at the lower temps of ethanol we usually used, rum is going to turn into gel.  I'd extract using Everclear or similar, and then mix. 

On Tue, May 7, 2013 at 10:25 AM, <william...@gmail.com> wrote:

We're going to make some DNA daiquiris for the London Hackspace spacewarming party this Sunday 12th May. The original recipe calls for a 75% rum, but not wanting to spend £80 on alcohol, we're looking at a cheaper 63% rum.

What's the minimum % you can use, and will yield be lower at lower ethanol concentrations?

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[william...@gmail.com]

No everclear in the UK, but thanks for the rum gel tip. It will be at -20.

[leaking pen]

yeah, that will definitely turn rum into gel.  Btw, the rums you are looking probably aren't 75 and 63 PERCENT, but proof.  75 percent would be bacardi 151, i doubt you'll find another rum at that concentration, and regular rum is generally 75 to 80 PROOF, which is 30-40 percent.  Looking around, I'm finding Poteen is a common irish whiskey you can get, its 90 percent (180 proof), that should be enough to do the trick. 

[Avery louie]

We normally use high-percentage ispropyl alchol, which is fine as long as you dont eat it.  You can get 90+ % at drug stores for cheap.

--A

[Cathal Garvey (Phone)]

Poteen comes in different grades, like absynthe (could be 60,80,95 etc), but is illegal regardless so it's hard to come by.

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[Cathal Garvey (Phone)]

Get some bioethanol on ebay for ethanol stoves, it's the purest I've found on the British Isles without a license. It's methylated so don't drink, obviously, but perfect for DNA.

Easier still: get 70% isopropanol (or 100 if available) at your local pharmacy, sold commonly as a disinfectant and more effective than ethanol. Not drinkable ofc!

[leaking pen]

They are looking for something to drink, specifically.  And why is poteen illegal? I show several websites showing stores selling it in the uk. 

[Nathan McCorkle]

I'm not sure why others are recommending any alcohol other than
ethanol for this. ONLY USE ETHANOL IF YOU WANT TO DRINK IT (and make
sure the ethanol is USP grade or sold as a product intended for human
consumption)

I've had success with Bacardi 151, I'm sure lower percentages will
work but it would be best if the two solutions were chilled in a
freezer first. For the aqueous phase (the strawberry filtrate) you
could probably just blend in some ice cubes to make a slurry, but the
ethanol will definitely do better the colder it is so throw the bottle
in a freezer for 30-60 minutes before use.

On Tue, May 7, 2013 at 10:25 AM, <william...@gmail.com> wrote:

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-Nathan

[Simon Quellen Field]

Where I live, here in California, 151 proof is the maximum allowed for sale.

Even the brand-name Ever-clear is only 151 here, instead of the higher purity you get elsewhere.

As a chemist, I must point out that there are many less toxic alcohols, such as oleyl alcohol, lauryl alcohol, and stearyl alcohol. In fact, octacosanol and triacontanol lower LDL and raise HDL when ingested. They aren't useful as solvents in this discussion, but someone might be interested in making Acidophilus good at producing them... :-)

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[Dakota Hamill]

But if you are making a drinkable shot how do you get around a lysis buffer and salt?

[Simon Quellen Field]

Both are optional.

Freeze the cells to do the lysis.

Breakdown the proteins with bromelain or meat tenderizer.

Mac Cowell did it with detergent and salt.

Patrik D'haeseleer did this when we were at Science Hack Day in 2011 but without the detergent and salt.

"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aM8MWuB6lfo"

"http://bonniebarrilleaux.com/projects/dnaquiri-the-delicious-dna-extraction/"

"http://www.flickr.com/photos/mbiddulph/6366331975/"

"http://cheapassscience.wordpress.com/tag/dnaquiri/"

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On Tue, May 7, 2013 at 5:02 PM, Dakota Hamill <dko...@gmail.com> wrote:

But if you are making a drinkable shot how do you get around a lysis buffer and salt?

--

[Daniel C.]

On Tue, May 7, 2013 at 6:20 PM, Simon Quellen Field <sfi...@scitoys.com> wrote:
> Where I live, here in California, 151 proof is the maximum allowed for sale.
> Even the brand-name Ever-clear is only 151 here, instead of the higher
> purity you get elsewhere.

Thank you for reminding me that I need to go to the Class Six (on a
military post) and stock up on Everclear before my contract with the
military is up :-)

-Dan

[Nathan McCorkle]

A dash of salt is all you need, add a chunk of fresh pineapple to whatever berries you have if you can't find unspiced meat tenderizer (bromelain or papain).... Freezing isn't neccesary but it will help. I've used a single blueberry and got DNA (though that time I had used a drop of detergent), strawberries are good too.

On May 7, 2013 5:02 PM, "Dakota Hamill" <dko...@gmail.com> wrote:

But if you are making a drinkable shot how do you get around a lysis buffer and salt?

--

[Cathal Garvey (Phone)]

"Fermented/distilled potato" probably isn't explicitly illegal, but 60% is (IIRC) the max legal EtOH concentration in drinks and home distillation is illegal. As there's no market big enough to support industrial scale watered down poitín, there simply isn't any at all. Legally, that is. There are plenty of backroom distilleries if you know who to ask.

[william...@gmail.com]

Thanks for all the replies.

We're following this recipe, so looking for a rum ideally, that we can buy in London by Sunday (We do not plan to drink anything that is not sold *for drinking* (we use 70% IPA for ordinary precipitation), and we know the difference between alcohol % and proof!)

We're probably going to buy a bottle of wray and nephew, test it and go for the daiquiris if it works. Apparently accounts for 90% of all rum sales in Jamaica, so if we find it anywhere, we'll find it in Hackney!

Cathal, seems your 60% figure isn't right for the UK if tesco are selling it. Unless of course you accuse Tesco of ever breaking the law.

[Patrik D'haeseleer]

When we did the DNA daiquiri, we tried a 40% vodka as well, but that definitely did *not* work.

151 proof / 75% rum or everclear is pretty easy to find here, so we went with that. DNA extraction with 75% works beautifully, but not surprisingly, the resulting drink winds up being very strong and rather harsh.

If you can find a 63% rum, it's definitely worth giving a try. If it works, it should make the cocktail much more enjoyable. I'd still recommend people swirl their glass before drinking though!

(And yes, as we've shown, you don't need any detergent, salt, or protease if you do frozen strawberries and 151 proof rum.)

Patrik

[leaking pen]

I need to find that here! nice.

[william...@gmail.com]

Wray and Nephew (63% rum) worked well. The biggest problem was separating the strawberry froth from the solution, as it looks quite similar to, and obscured the DNA.

We also found that DNA yields were far higher when we included loads of strawberry mush than when we strained it to just get the liquid. Perhaps a blender would have solved this.

[Patrik D'haeseleer]

Excellent - great to hear!

When we did ours, we pushed all of the pulp through a sieve, rather than merely straining or blending it, which gave tons of DNA. We didn't try blending the strawberry mush, because that risks shearing the DNA.

Next, I guess we need to get someone to try the 63% and 75% rum side by side, to see how much of a difference that makes. We didn't notice any trouble with froth obscuring the DNA whatsoever, which could be due to differences in how the strawberries were prepared, or due to the higher alcohol %.

How did the taste work out for you guys?

Patrik