Question: How would you extract DNA from a piece of hair

Lilian Hunt answered on 17 Mar 2014:

First things first, the hair needs to have its root as this is where the DNA is. The rest of the hair doesn’t actually contain anything we can use in this process. Because of this there isn’t that much DNA so it can be a bit tricky to get DNA from hair sometimes, but we’ve got a lot better at it over the years. What we do is take the hair follicle (the root bit) and add an enzyme that breaks up the cells so we can get to the DNA inside them. You have to make sure you don’t add it for too long as it will eventually break down all the cells and then start breaking down the DNA – not good! Then with your DNA solution you can purify and clean it. There are kits that help you do this that you buy from science companies so it’s pretty easy really, but the success depends on the quality of the DNA at the start. A lot of the time we then multiply the DNA we have extracted so we have lots of it to use for testing! 🙂