Environmental Forensics

Environmental Forensics is the application of detecting and identifying unknown samples from the environment by using molecular and bioinformatic approaches. The unknown sample was collected from a botanical garden, which has a lot of native Hawaiian flora, by a local community member. I performed DNA extraction, PCR, Agarose gel electrophoresis, and Sequencing in the project. Eventually, I figured out that the sample was most likely to be a jumping spider (Hasarius adansoni). I learned how to make master mix for PCR and how to identify samples from the environment using online resource like BLAST (Basic Local Alignment Search Tool) in the ncbi website.

For PCR, Polymerase Chain Reaction could amplify and produce large amount of DNA sequence for analysis. I was able to recognize how to distinguish positive result and negative result. In addition, I could understand how people can get different result by different inspectors, and blurry results could be interpreted significantly by multiple individuals.

For sequencing, DNA sequence could be determined by terminated the elongation with ddNTP (Dideoxynucleotide). Because of the flurescent is linked to the ddNTP, fluorescence detector could identify different bases with their different color of flurescent.

The course: BIOL 375L