Caitlyn's Corner

This week’s blog post in not light hearted or funny like my other posts in the past. However, this week I want to share something that is both interesting and serious. Back in the early 50’s, if someone went missing, or came up murdered, the technology used to capture the criminal was not nearly as amazing as what we have today. Specifically, there was a case in 1948 where a woman was brutally raped and murdered in a small English community. There were no witnesses, no one knew anything about that tragic night. However, the cops were able to find one thing left behind that would help them solve this murder case. The murder left a fingerprint behind on a glass bottle found at the crime scene. After gathering over 45,000 fingerprints, the murderer was finally found and convicted. Fingerprints are very unique, and no two people in the world have the EXACT same prints. This is why fingerprints are one of the first things looked for in a criminal investigation.   But what happ...

We can thank Paul Hebert for my corny title of this week’s blog. In 2003 Paul Hebert's research group were the first to introduce DNA Barcoding. So, what exactly is DNA Barcoding? Well its exactly what it sounds like. DNA Barcoding is a system used to identify species. It allows identification by using a short section of DNA from a standardized region of the genome. The gene responsible for this amazing discovery is a 648 base-pair region in the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase 1 gene ("CO1"). CO1 has been proven to be very effective, which is good because it is cheap and can be sequenced quickly and easily. The only fault the COI barcode has is in regard to plants. However, an alternative has been found and scientist can use two gene regions in the chloroplast, matK and rbcL for plant barcoding. DNA Barcoding can be broken down into four main components. These four components include the specimens, the laboratory analysis, the database, and the data analysis. DN...

The ability to clone anything is a huge step in the science world. Twenty Five years ago, cloning seemed like just a fictional idea. Geneticists and molecular biologists have done numerous experiments in regard to cloning. The biggest story that we all know is little Dolly, the sheep that was cloned by Scottish scientists. Dolly was born on July 5, 1996. She was the first animal to be cloned from an adult somatic cell, using the process of nuclear transfer. The donor for Dolly was a cell taken from a mammary gland. Dolly only lived to be 6 years old at the Roslin Institute. However, during her six shorts years of life, she was able to give birth to 6 lambs. Sadly, on February 14, 2003 Dolly had to be put to rest due to a lung disease. Many theories of her death have been approached. Some say she died at the age of 6 because the donor that she was cloned form was only six years old. However, the autopsy performed on Dolly shows that her lungs were filled with a cancer called J...

Diseases are always a hot topic in every branch of science. From the early times, when people or animals got sick, there was some scientist wanting to know why and how. The transfer of diseases from animals to humans is not anything new. At one point in history animals lived in very close quarters with their humans and that is what sparked many diseases in humans. The most known diseases like the bubonic plague or rabies are studied and researched by bacteriologist or epidemiologist. But what about the rare diseases that are not transferred through direct contact or a bite? There are diseases that be contracted by a misfolded protein. This is where the study of diseases at a molecular level comes in handy.   The study of prion diseases use to be something so rare, no one really thought it needed to be studied in depth. In 1730 the first prion disease or transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSE's) was discovered in sheep and goats. This prion disease is known as Scr...