Advanced - For experienced high school and college classes; requires some technical skill.
Students use safe saline mouthwash or hair and Chelex extraction to obtain a sample of their own DNA. Then amplify a 440-nucleotide segment of a hypervariable region of the mitochondrial chromosome, which contains numerous single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs).
After gel electrophoresis confirms amplification, the student samples may be sent for sequencing (Visit for sequencing instructions and services, small fee applies), and the results are posted on the DNALC's Sequence Server .