• Question: if we got a container and took oxygen out of it then put blood in it without the blood turning red what experiments can we do?

    Asked by lilih to Kat, Andrew, Katie, Sadaf on 18 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Andrew Swale

      Andrew Swale answered on 18 Jun 2013:

      Even if we took oxygen out of the air the blood would still be a darker maroon colour rather than bright red

      This is how blood is taken for research purposes. The nurses take patients’ blood for me in ‘vacutainers’ – these are tubes in which a vacuum is exerted which draws the blood from the vein into the tube

      So the blood I receive is usually darker red

      Usually I then extract DNA from the blood and use the DNA in my experiments!

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