Murder by HIV Michele Shuster Naowarat Cheeptham Laura Regassa

Outreach Program Adaptable for different grade levels – High school – Middle school

National Science Standards Life Science – Grade 5-8 Reproduction and heredity Populations and ecosystems Diversity, adaptation, and organisms – Grade 9-12 Molecular basis of heredity Biological evolution Science and Technology (Gr 5-12) – Understanding about science and technology

Learning objectives Virology focused on HIV Molecular evolution Bioinformatics – sequence comparison and tree construction Critical thinking and analytical skills Practical application of skills to address societal issues Foster a positive attitude towards science

HIV Activity Case study: Hospital in Louisiana Students provided HIV reverse transcriptase sequences – Original infected patient – Nurse/victim – State-wide HIV cases – Random US cases

Activities Multiple sequence alignment: MUSCLE Tree building: MUSCLE Determination of guilt or other possibilities

What we have left to do … Analyze nucleotide alignments/trees – Choose final data sets Generate introductory/background materials – Biology info – Crime scene evidence & context Generate assessment tool