Cereal will never be the same

COEUR d’ALENE — The young researchers in Annette Brennan's life science class will never look at a bowl of Wheaties the same.

During a wheat germ DNA extraction lab on Tuesday, Lakes Middle School seventh-graders learned how to break down cell walls using distilled water, pure alcohol and a soapy solution to pull the microscopic yet infinitely complex deoxyribonucleic acid to the top of a test tube.

The students then carefully transferred the DNA samples to wet mounts to examine under microscopes.

"It's not what I expected it to look like," said a curious Trenton Howe, who was one of the first in his class to get to the microscope portion of the lab. "It looks like a worm but smaller."

Trenton found the lab to be interesting, but he's always enjoyed science. He said he used to watch "Bill Nye the Science Guy" with his dad when he was little.

"I never thought I would do this," Trenton said, peering through the eyepiece. "It's something I'd like to experience again."

Brennan began the class with a Bill Gates quote to spark the inquisitive minds of her students: "DNA is like a computer program but far more advanced than any software ever created."

She followed up with questions, such as, "Why do we have muscle cells? Why do we have bone cells? Skin cells? All these different cells?"

Students' answers varied — "To keep our bodies functioning," "Because one cell can't do all the jobs," "So they can make a super human."

"DNA has the codes and directions for everything," Brennan said. "Even if you have directions you're not going to use, it's still all there."

Sheen Broncheau added water to his test tube and gently swirled it for a minute to let it mix.

"I feel like it's really cool, because you get to learn more about DNA," he said. "I like hands-on science experiments."