Be a Bushmeat Conservation Officer!

BE A BUSHMEAT CONSERVATION OFFICER!

Your Co-workers and you have been busy undercover trying to bust a bushmeat operation. On your quest you were able to come across several suspects and with a variety of illegally taken game. In order to properly prosecute the assailants you need to make a positive identification of the samples. While working with a DNA polymerase lab technician you were given several DNA sequences that are yet to be specifically identified. It is now your job to complete the case for prosecution. In order to do so you will need to take the organisms code and place it in a database that will give you the organisms name. Then you are to create a list to show jurors just what the poachers have taken away from the ecosystem for profit. Good luck!

Google Search ‘Blast’ and click on the link, it should be titled blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.

Click on the nucleotide blast link under Basic Blast program.

Open another Internet explorer tab. Goto Mr. Stankowski’s website. Goto POTE and highlight Animal Management and then highlight bushmeat crisis. There you will find this page as well as the DNA nucleotide sequence of twelve mystery animals. Mr. Stankowski will give you a set of numbers to look up. Write these down and then click on the corresponding samples in progression.

Copy your nucleotide sequence and head back to BLAST. Paste your nucleotide sequence under the enter query sequence. Scroll down and under ‘Choose Search Set’ you will need to open the database up to include “nucleotide collection (nr/nt)”. Scroll down further and click on BLAST. It will take several moments for your query to come up. Once it is recognized it will then give you a list of possible organisms that it is. They will be in the animals scientific name. You will now have to copy and paste that name into a separate search engine to find out what the common name is. Also find out what the animal looks like by clicking images. Copy and paste the image in a word document and label the sample with the animals common name.

Continue through the process until you have discovered all of your samples.