A D D I S O N U P T O NA P B I O LO GY D N A

T E C H N O LO GY P R O J E C T

CSI: HOLLYWOOD

• The CSI team at the Hollywood Police Department got a call one Tuesday morning about a murder at the Canterbury Hotel.• When the team got to the crime scene, they

realized they weren’t dealing with just any ole murderer; this guy cleaned up very well after himself and seemed to have had some practice at killing people. The only DNA they could find that wasn’t the vicitim’s, Harry Glass, was a microscopic drop of blood of what they assumed was the killer’s.

Victim: Harry Glass

• Back in the lab, the forensic specialist, Annie Stanfill, went right to work on trying to identify the unknown blood sample of the killer.• The sample was too small to work with so she

amplified it by a Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR).• She then analyzed the DNA to see if it matched

any of the DNA sequences in the police records since it looked like the killer was no stranger to murders.• Annie cut the DNA by restriction enzymes and ran

it through gel electrophoresis. The RFLP analysis of the sample was not a match to any records.

NO MATCH

• While Annie was working hard in the lab, the rest of the team had been investigating all of the people that had been in the hotel and had narrowed down to two suspects: Jane Doberman and Willis Hunter.• They got DNA samples of the suspects and Annie

went back to the lab, hoping to have some luck this time.

Suspect 1: Jane Doberman Suspect 2: Willis Hunter

• She ran the two suspects’ DNA through Southern Blotting with a labeled probe and used RFLP analysis again to compare the two. She still didn’t get a match to the DNA sample from the crime scene.• The team was certain that the killer had to be one

of the two suspects, but the DNA analysis was just not matching up and DNA does not lie.• They searched though the suspects’ home and

found a peculiar vial of some substance and a syringe in Jane Doberman’s apartment. It was not labeled so they took it to Annie and had her run tests on it.

• The vial turned out to contain plasmids with cDNA.• The tests found that Jane Doberman had inserted

cloned DNA of someone else into her and fabricated the crime scene to point the fingers at someone else.• This is why the DNA did not match anyone from

the hotel or computer data base.• Jane was arrested for the murder of Harry Glass

and is currently serving 50 years in prison.

CASE CLOSED