that breaks open the cells in that stain, exposes the dna molecule. and then hopefully i can isolate that molecule and wash away all of the debris and all of the other chemicals in that sample. the next step would be called quantify -- about how much dna was i able to recover from that stain. i use that information for the next step, which is amplification. i'm basically making xerox copies, almost, of the dna molecule. but only at these 13 or 15 different regions that i'm interested in testing to develop the dna profile. i make millions and millions of copies of the molecule at these specific regions so that i can analyze these regions. the last step is called electroforesis where i actually separate out the dna molecules that i was able to amplify by size. i get a data readout.