Candy Electrophoresis Lab

In this lab, we ran dyes from different candies through the process of electrophoresis. The bands of our dyes were fairly normal, all dyes moving in the correct direction. Some bands left a trail behind them, the orange one on the far right leaving a blue trail. One dye that might move like this is fast green FCF, because many parts of it are negatively charged, like these dyes. Some dog foods and treats. contain dyes. I think this is because in nature, some colors symbolize something can be poisonous, like brightly colored animals, so the food is colored in a way that it won't be seen as poisonous. Artificial food colors could be preferred over natural food colors because natural food colors may affect the taste of what is being dyed, while artificial dyes can be engineered to have little to no flavor. There is also no foods that are naturally blue, even blueberries, which are a dark purple. Some dyes migrated farther than others, which is caused by the size of the molecule, and the strength of the charge. Smaller molecules, like the yellow gel, move faster, and also more strongly charged molecules are more attracted to the positive charge coming from the current, which is what makes the dye molecules move at all. The larger molecules move more slowly through the dye, such as the two blue colored dyes in the gel. The process of electrophoresis is commonly used to separate different lengths of DNA. If a DNA molecule had a weight of 600 daltons, it would go a lot farther than a DNA strand with a weight of 1,000 daltons, because it is a bigger molecule. If it had 2,000 daltons it would go even slower, and if it had 5,000 daltons, all the other molecules would move much farther.