Is consuming DNA safe? (not what you think. perverts.)

[Internetmeme]

Okay, I was browsing the "experiments" thread and came across an experiment that I want to try. It's extracting concentrated DNA from a strawbery, and I have been wondering...

Is it safe to eat?

That would be cool, to say that i have eaten pure concentrated DNA!


2/9/09-added (not what you think. Perverts.) in light of someone thinking it was a euphamism for semen.

[Pa-Patch]

I can't imagine it wouldn't be. Are strawberries poison?
Then parts of strawberries are probably not poison either!

Like, check if you're going to make a ton of it, but you should be fine if you're eating like, 20 strawberries worth of DNA, because 20 strawberries won't kill you.

[Izawwlgood]

DNA is fragile, and when removed from it's 'native' environment of the cell nucleus, rapidly breaks down. Eating DNA is safe. As for whatever you extracted the DNA in, that's another matter entirely (e.g. chloroform and phenol are used in DNA extractions)

[Neuman]

Well yeah. If they lurked where you did expect them they'd be pretty lousy ninjas.

[Bassoon]

Well yeah. If they lurked where you did expect them they'd be pretty lousy ninjas.

But if they successfully lurked where you'd expect to see them and you didn't see them, you'd either be very dumb or they're really great ninjas.

[Rentsy]

The only things I can think of that are dangerous solely because of their structural properties are prions.

You'll be fine.

[BlackSails]

The only things I can think of that are dangerous solely because of their structural properties are prions.

Good luck giving a reasonable definition of structural vs chemical properties for macromolecules.

[mollusk]

I suppose you could isolate it with isopropanol and then wash it with 75% ethanol. It won't dissolve in the ethanol, and consuming a small amount of grain alcohol isn't exactly dangerous.

[++$_]

You have to be really careful. Things labeled "75% ethanol" often contain methanol, which you definitely don't want to consume.

[mollusk]

You have to be really careful. Things labeled "75% ethanol" often contain methanol, which you definitely don't want to consume.

True. You'd definitely want to make it yourself. Most lab supply companies sell 200 proof alcohol w/o additives. On the other hand, I'm still not sure why anyone would want to actually do this.

[wst]

I'm surprised no-one's brought up fellatio yet.

Oh, wait, I just did.

[qetzal]

You have to be really careful. Things labeled "75% ethanol" often contain methanol, which you definitely don't want to consume.

True. You'd definitely want to make it yourself. Most lab supply companies sell 200 proof alcohol w/o additives. On the other hand, I'm still not sure why anyone would want to actually do this.

No need. Just go to the liquor store, buy 190 proof Everclear, and use that for your DNA precipitations.

Of course, if you used phenol or chloroform or any other toxic substances earlier in your DNA prep, I recommend against consuming the DNA no matter how much you precipitate & wash with EtOH.

[tantalum]

If I remember correctly, the most popular method by which they produce 200proof ethanol is azeotropic removal of water with benzene... leading to residual traces of benzene in the resulting ethanol. Your particular provider of 200proof ethanol might use another method to remove water, but... you have been warned.

[embernator]

Consuming DNA is safe. That's what you do every time you eat. When you eat a fish, the fish protiens and fats and DNA and everything in the fish is broken down in your digestive system and then turned into human DNA and protiens and everything else

[Jorpho]

If I remember correctly, the most popular method by which they produce 200proof ethanol is azeotropic removal of water with benzene... leading to residual traces of benzene in the resulting ethanol. Your particular provider of 200proof ethanol might use another method to remove water, but... you have been warned.

There are residual traces of benzene in a lot of things. Apple juice, for instance.

[Iv]

What is the mass ratio of DNA in food (I'm too lazy to calculate this) ? I suppose the original poster question was about consuming concentrated DNA. What part of a strawberry's mass is made of DNA ? 1% ? 0.00001% ? 10% ? In some cases, eating 100 grams of DNA may be a thing that has never been done, so the question of the toxicity remains for such high doses.

Subsidiary question : what would it taste like ?

[ian]

it would taste like science!

and i imagine eating 100g would be fine, like an above poster said it will breadown quickly, and it's certainly not going to survive the digestive system intact.

[sgt york]

DNA is fragile, and when removed from it's 'native' environment of the cell nucleus, rapidly breaks down. Eating DNA is safe. As for whatever you extracted the DNA in, that's another matter entirely (e.g. chloroform and phenol are used in DNA extractions)

Actually, DNA is amazingly stable. I have samples in the fridge from the mid 1990s that are still in really good shape. We used to send DNA samples around the country by "spotting" some on a regular piece of paper and mailing it. Print out the fragment map, pipette some of the DNA on the printout, draw a circle around it and let it dry. And yes, we would send it as a regular letter.

In fact, DNA is so stable that one of the problems your body runs into with chronic infections is clearing the bacterial DNA; the new bugs eat it and use it to build scaffolding in biofilms. However, eating it is fine (as long as you don't eat too much; it can cause metabolic problems if you eat too much). We necessarily eat it all the time. The stomach is very acidic, and DNA breaks down quickly in acidic environments.

All it takes is a slightly alkaline environment or drying, and DNA will last decades. This is one reason why DNA vaccines are so attractive; all you do is dry them and they keep for years at any reasonable temperature (as in, less than 60C). As long as you keep it from getting acidic, and not super-alkaline (like over 10 or so), it's really stable.

Eating the purified DNA: I wouldn't if I were you. The main thing is that it's an intentionally dirty technique. Clean DNA makes a glassy pellet; it's hard to see. The DNA itself won't hurt you, but the contaminants will. It was mentioned elsewhere, but the protocol (if it's the one I posted a few months back) says to use rubbing alcohol, which is not ethanol (it's isopropanol). And isopropanol is really bad for you. Also, you use detergent to get rid of the membranes, and it won't get washed off that well in this technique. And soap is also bad for you to eat.

If you really want to eat it (and I don't suggest you do this), you should clean it up first. I was going to tell you how, but I'd suggest you just not do it.

[Jorpho]

If it were purified properly, mightn't it be predicted to taste sour, like acids generally do? Or is that generalization too broad?

[BlackSails]

If it were purified properly, mightn't it be predicted to taste sour, like acids generally do? Or is that generalization too broad?

Too broad. Carboyxlic acids are usually sour, I dont know if that extends for inorganic acids, like phosphoric acid.

It might taste sugary, if the riboses are somehow released.

[Snicklefrits]

I'm surprised no-one's brought up fellatio yet.

Oh, wait, I just did.

That's what I thought this thread was about when I saw the title. Haha.

[PM 2Ring]

You have to be really careful. Things labeled "75% ethanol" often contain methanol, which you definitely don't want to consume.

That depends where you live. Some denatured ethanol does contain methanol, but it's pretty rare in Australia these days, and only used in certain applications. Mostly they use Bitrex to make it unpalatable.

And about isopropanol: it's not highly toxic, or it wouldn't be used as rubbing alcohol, etc. It can be taken internally in small amounts, but it's not recommended. A few drops won't kill you, though.

Carboyxlic acids are usually sour, I dont know if that extends for inorganic acids, like phosphoric acid.

It certainly does. Phosphoric acid is used in in certain black cola-based soft drinks. Large amounts of sweetener balance out the sour taste. The original version of the well-known cola used citric acid, but they switched to phosphoric as it was cheaper. The body can actually metabolize phosphorus from the acid, so that's not as evil as it may sound.

Hydrochloric acid tastes sour: I drank some once in high school, highly diluted in water, of course. This was probably stupid, due to the other things I may have imbibed in the chem lab environment. But it did impress my class mates.

A more common way to taste HCl is to vomit, but it's usually mixed with other stuff...

[sgt york]

re: taste

I'm going with salty. Salt is a major player in the precipitation, and you're probably not going to get it all off the DNA with repeated washing/precipitations. It's possible, but really hard to do. So, you aren't really going to taste the DNA. DNA is so big the molarity won't be high, so you won't have a lot of it occupying the receptors responsible for taste. Probably none of it, actually. Receptor binding is dictated by the concentration of the ligand. (note this is binding, not signal....two different things)

Take a solution with 1mg of DNA and 1ug of NaCl as a contaminant. DNA will have a molecular weight on the order of 1e8 g/mol. Salt is about 58 g/mol. So even though there is 1/1000 the mass of salt in the solution, the molarity of salt is roughly 2 million times higher than the molarity of DNA. (and that, kids, is why chem courses go over molarity & normality so much...it really is important!)

Of course, some tastes will get amplified at the second messenger (etc) level, so something that is at a low concentration can have subjectively more taste than anything else at that concentration, so it's really up in the air.

But I think I'll stick with "salty".

[Jorpho]

It should be noted that HCl (and NaOH) are often produced via electrolysis in mercury and contain non-trace amounts of mercury.

That particular article doesn't seem to suggest that the samples tested contained "non-trace" amounts of mercury (which makes it seem like rather shoddy reporting, really). I also rather like how it says that the chemicals in question are "primarily used by the high fructose corn syrup industry" without saying whether they're actually used to produce HFCS.

[Izawwlgood]

What does mercury have to do with DNA isolation?

[Senefen]

Eating DNA? I don't see why not. It's in everything we eat already, though it would get destroyed with cooking.
Lot of phosphrus in it though. You probably wouldn't want to eat a pile of pure DNA, but I think it would be pretty harmless, the body breaks down DNA all the time but it's better to be safe.
As people have mentioned the trouble is isolating the DNA in the first place, especially when nasty chemicals are used.

[Internetmeme]

I'll go with starting a thread in the food forum. So basically, one or two strawberry's worth would be fine?
Now, when I do this, I wanna see how it tastes, I just need some way to do this that won't contaminate it with other chemicals.

[Iori_Yagami]

So, basically eating DNA itself is safe, because it is easily broken down in stomach or earlier. It is other chemicals which indeed may hurt you.
So, you CANNOT eat genes. It is meaningless. And if I hear one more time from someone, that eating those GMO foods will make you have those genes (like, eat a tomato with fish gene, and you'll turn all red with fish fins growing on your face... ) I'm going to ask XKCD to give me permission to put a wastebucket on their head to stop that hilarity!

[Telchar]

If I recall from Bio, your body doesn't absorb whole nutrients after age 2 I think. The acids in your body end up denaturing any protiens and breakdown DNA molecules so you end up actually absorbing the phosphate, nucleotides, and amino acids individually. Hence why the whole genetically modified food will kill you craze is so insane.

[Izawwlgood]

I think the GMO food craze is a bit different from this. People aren't worried they'll eat a spliced gene and grow a third eye, they're worried the spliced gene won't behave as intended and the food group as a whole will be tainted in a way we don't yet understand.

And you know, mass stupidity.

[BlackSails]

And you know, mass stupidity.

Not entirely. It is possible for things you eat to do bad things. Neuramic-5 Sialic acid for example.

[idobox]

I think the GMO food craze is a bit different from this. People aren't worried they'll eat a spliced gene and grow a third eye, they're worried the spliced gene won't behave as intended and the food group as a whole will be tainted in a way we don't yet understand.

The main concern is that the genes are inserted in random places and might disrupt or disturb cellular process, resulting in the presence of harmful denatured proteins.

Anyway, that could make a good beginning for a lousy comics:
"Young Internetmeme, reading on the internet how to extract DNA decided to extract strawberry DNA and eat it. Since that day, he is known as THE STRAWBERRY AVENGER. Using his mighty strawberry powers, he fights crime and butchers."

[Telchar]

I can see the cross polenization part, but my understanding of proteins was that once they became denatured, they effectively become harmless due to the sensitive nature of tertiary and quaternary structure. I we talking about something similar to preons?

[idobox]

Not really prions, but if the transgene gets implanted to a place where it blocks the syntheses of an enzyme that participate in the folding of another protein, then that protein will be different, with possibly adverse effect.
You can think of it as inserting a subroutine in some computer code without caring where you insert it. There are three possible outcomes:
-most probably, the program will stop working
-The program can work with alterations, without using the inserted code efficiently
-The inserted code can work while disrupting some functions of the program
-The inserted code can work while leaving the previous functions unaltered.
Okay, the comparison is not perfect, but if you play with the tax computation subroutine for example, you can end up with wrong values, and loose a lot of money.

I've watched a TV show against Monsanto GM corn, and they said that GM corn contains something like 14 unknown proteins, whose effects are not known. Sure, it is an obviously biased source, and I don' know what they mean by unknown proteins, or how many unknown proteins there are in non GM corn, but this is the main concern about GM and human health.

[Izawwlgood]

Perhaps the confusion came from your choice of the word denature.

A denatured protein is just a peptide string, i.e., only primary structure is maintained. The protein will not function anymore, and I'm fairly certain won't function in a similar manner as a prion.

Transgenic insertion as you described is more akin to how some viruses undergo part of their cycle.

[idobox]

So how do you call a protein with the right sequence of amino acids, but not the right folding? or a precursor protein that could not be used because an enzyme is lacking?
I don't say this is how it works, or that this kind of problems really occur, since my source for that was an anti GM documentary.

[Actaeus]

When I saw this I thought "DNA" was a euphemism for... y'know... genetic material.

[wst]

When I saw this I thought "DNA" was a euphemism for... y'know... genetic material.

I'm surprised no-one's brought up fellatio.

Okay, I didn't mention it by name, but yes, I meant semen.

[sgt york]

So how do you call a protein with the right sequence of amino acids, but not the right folding?

The fancy name for it is misfolded or unfolded protein. I don't think I've ever heard it referred to as anything else.

or a precursor protein that could not be used because an enzyme is lacking?

An inactive precursor. There are lots of these around, they are held on to in large quantities, ready to be used upon exposure to protease.

Most prions, last time I checked (and this may have changed, it's an active field that I'm not direectly involved in) work more like precursors than misfolding events.

Take the hypothetical normal host protein Hrmlss, with the sequence GHPPSTWECDAAMQR. Now say that there's another protein, Crzbov, with the sequence STWECDAAMQR (note the similarity, highlighted in bold). Crzbov is capable of cleaving the amino terminal GHPP- from Hrmlss. If Crzbov comes in contact with any Hrmlss, the Hrmlss is instantly converted into Crzbov, and you now have two copies of Crzbov and a little peptide sequence (GHPP) left over. If this is in a host tissue, full of Hrmlss, this will accelerate exponentially until the Hrmlss is used up.

Transgenes do usually affect and are affected by the areas they lie down in. I used to work on a mouse line that had a trophoblast-specific transgene lie down in an unknown location that caused ectopic expression in the gut, with very welcome grant-generating results. We never did find out what the regulatory event was, but something near the insertion site caused the transgene to get expressed where it shouldn't. A guy I went to grad school with thought he was about to cure cancer (really). But in the end, it was just because his promoter was leaking onto some neighboring cell cycle arresting genes. Whenever he activated his gene, he also turned on some other already well-known genes.

This is why you never make just one transgenic; you make 5-6 at a time. Not only does this hedge your bets in the failure rate of making tg lines, but it protects you from misrepresented results. If you get a phenotype that's just in one line, you know it's probably not from just your gene.

[Internetmeme]

The thing about GM foods hurting people, however, is that people often confuse Griffith's Experiment with things having to do with transformation in people. I hate that misconception.

Also, for those that don't know, not insulting the intelligence of anyone here,

RNA is made from DNA in a process called transcription
and the resulting RNA is used to make Peptide Sequences (proteins) in a process called translation.

So:
DNA->RNA->Proteins

Now, can we please get back onto topic? Start a new topic about genetically modified foods if you really want to talk about it.