The Daily Bulletin Archive

Manali Patel, a master's degree candidate in the forensic science program at Buffalo State, will present her thesis seminar on Thursday, April 5, from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. in Science Building 220. Patel graduated from the University at Buffalo with a B.S. in biology and joined the Buffalo State program in fall 2010. Her research has been carried out under the direction of Amy McMillan, associate professor of biology.

This seminar is part of the spring 2012 Chemistry/Physics Seminar Series, sponsored by the Auxiliary Services Grant Allocation Committee, the Vice President for Student Affairs Office, and the Faculty-Student Association.

Abstract
An allelic ladder for the bald eagle, Haliaeetus leucocephalus, microsatellite locus Hal01, was constructed. The allelic ladder includes alleles with lengths 137, 141, 143, 135, 149, and 151 bp in size. Since the components of the allelic ladder and the sample fragments have the same length and the same sequence, sizing is very accurate when conducted with an allelic ladder. Allelic ladders are therefore very useful in population genetics studies. First, the available bald eagle allele samples were screened to find consecutive alleles at Hal01 locus. The alleles were PCR amplified and analyzed using capillary electrophoresis with fluorescent detection of fragment sizes. The criteria for the selected allele samples were high peak intensity and specificity, and low stutter peak percentage. The selected amplified alleles were then co-amplified to obtain all the alleles in approximately equal amounts. The co-amplification was carried out with a fluorescently labeled primer in order to obtain a dye-labeled ladder as desired for the population studies. Because of the high stutter percentage observed in bald eagle alleles, optimizing the PCR conditions and reagent concentrations was an important step of the study. The constructed ladder was used to size known alleles via capillary electrophoresis with fluorescent detection. The known alleles lined up correctly with the allelic ladder, and hence, the ladder is usable for population genetics studies for this locus.