We had a group of 10 fabulous middle school aged kids, eager to learn about DNA and how we look for mutations in it. After extracting DNA from our own cheek cells and making roughly a billion copies of part of the target gene of interest, we ran Gel Electrophoresis (shown above) on our samples and found that there were some homozygous Tasters of PTC (a bitter chemical in broccoli), some heterozygous Tasters, and some homozygous Non-Tasters! We finished up with a 20 minute quiz show style buzzer round to review what we learned. Judging by the amount of candy each student won in the buzzer round, everyone learned a lot!