In this project, we investigated the murder of Carleton Comet. The first piece of evidence was a fingerprint found at the crime scene. The whorl pattern on the fingerprint only matched to Nancy Normal. The second piece of evidence was a written note reading, "You are a dead man." After analyzing the ink of the note with the ink of pens belonging to those at the scene using chromatography, it was determined that only Nancy Normal's pen could have written the note. The last portion of evidence found at the scene was the two blood samples found on the murder weapon. One matched the victim, Carleton Comet in both type and in the DNA contained. The second blood sample only matched Nancy Normal's blood type and DNA sequence. These results were obtained by running the blood through electrophoresis and comparing to all possible suspects. We determined that Nancy Normal was the killer, but that Fred Flimmer convinced her to kill him.
Content: DNA: Physical "code" of all functions and traits of your body Gene: A portion of your DNA that corresponds to a single trait Alleles: Forms of a genetic trait Chromosome: A tightly packed form of DNA, only used when a cell is going through meiosis or mitosis Trait Expression: The process of DNA sequences showing as physical traits through Protein Synthesis Dominant: Mixed alleles will show only this trait e.g. (Red + White = Red) Co-Dominant: Mixed alleles lead to a mixture of both traits e.g.(Red + White = Pink) Incomplete Dominance: Mixed alleles lead to the separate expression of both traits e.g.(Red + White = Speckled) Recessive: Will only be expressed if both alleles have the trait Karyotype: An image showing all of an organism's chromosomes organized based on number Phenotype: All physical characteristics originated from gene to trait expression
Reflection: This project was interesting because we were presented with something that forensic analysts experience daily. In this project, I learned a lot about keeping track of evidence. To do this, I needed to be organized, which is a skill I have somewhat lacked in the past, but I believe I have succeeded at this project. I also needed to keep an open mind during this project and not jump to conclusions, otherwise we wouldn't get the right killer. Because of our open-mindedness, we determined that Fred Flimmer was also a suspect, even though most other groups just chose Nancy Normal. However, I did struggle with focusing on this project because there were so many differing aspects it was easy to get caught up on one and ignore the others. The other difficult piece of this project was that it was less explained than some projects. Because of this, I was often confused often throughout this project, but did not ask many questions. I have learned that I need to ask more questions.