Final answer:
Not eating or drinking before a DNA extraction lab is essential for safety to avoid accidental ingestion of harmful substances, and to prevent contamination of experimental samples with foreign DNA or other substances.
Step-by-step explanation:
There are two important reasons why it is a good idea not to eat or drink for approximately one hour prior to the start of a lab for DNA extraction. First, consuming food or beverages in a lab setting can pose a safety hazard. You are responsible for your own safety, as well as the safety of others, and eating or drinking can accidentally lead to the ingestion of hazardous substances. Second, eating in the lab can pose a risk of contaminating the experimental samples. Consuming food or beverages could introduce foreign DNA or other contaminants into the samples being analyzed, which can interfere with the experimental results, such as those obtained when isolating DNA from biological samples like strawberries or kiwis.