Part B: Forensic Science-A Rape Case You are a molecular biologist involved in f

Question

Part B: Forensic Science-A Rape Case You are a molecular biologist involved in forensic medicine. Two young women have recently been raped within a span of two weeks and you have been glven blood and semen samples from the crime scenes You ran an agarose gel electrophoresis with the samples in the following wells, applying the restriction enzyme, EcoRi to each sample Well 1: blood from victim A Well 2: blood from victim B Well 3: semen collected on Victim A Well 4: semen collected on Victim B Well 5: blood from suspect X Well 6: blood from suspectY Well 7: blood from suspect 2 Semen Vicim Suren yidin 72 Examine the results above and determine: a) whether both women were, in fact, assaulted by the same man- Vichm wns assulfed by 1. which, if any, of the accused is involved in the crime, th women Were Assuited hy two ditherent nen. 2. Write a brief summary of your findings Note: In actuality, gel electrophoresis is combined with another technique called Southern Blotting in order to obtain a DNA fingerprint. Southern Blots involve the use of radloactively labeled DNA probes which attach to fragments of DNA which have been made single- stranded. Botechnolcgy in the Cassroom 2009 16 Than StandaraRo

Explanation / Answer

By examining the results from agarose gel electrophoresis, we can summarize them as following-

a) The two victims were assaulted by two different men because the semen samples collected from the victims A and B were different from each other.

b) By looking at the similarity of bands that appeared on gel, we can conclusively say that semen sample found on victim A matched the blood sample from suspect X and semen sample found on victim B matched the blood sample from suspect Y. This confirms two things i.e. victim A was assaulted by suspect X but not by suspect Y, and victim B was assaulted by suspect Y and not by suspect X.

c) Blood sample from the suspect Z did not match with any of the semen samples collected from the victims hence suspect Z did not commit any rape.

Thanks!

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