Was Pete Anderson Guilty

Based on all of the non-genetic evidence given, Pete Anderson is guilty. If the verdict was based off of the morphology of X. tortifolia and X. confertifolia, I would say that he was innocent since they are found at the archeological site and the Johnson mine; but that’s not the reality of this case. Although the three Southern plants from Utah looked similar from the outside with the white petals and yellow center, they have different preferences when it comes to soil and location. X. tortifolia plants grow on slopes near the bottom of washes with gray soils, X. confertifolia grows on mesa tops where there’s brown soil and X. cronquistii prefers grey soil but it is rare and appears in only a few places. The fact that X. cronquistii is only found in a few locations is important because the state agent realized (after consulting with the botanist) that X. cronquistii grows in the same area that the looted Anasazi site is in. It appeared that Pete’s innocence was about to be proven when the State Geologist said that the Johnson mine is in the same geological area as the archeological site and it both has soil with a brownish, silty top layer and a gray layer beneath it but
the botanist showed evidence that the X. cronquistii flower could not grow in the soil and the location of the mine.

The scientist used a process known as Gel electrophoresis to separate DNA molecules from each other.
The botanist advised the state agent to use the size of the protein “compositase” to find the identity of the plant in the pot. This process uses electric currents to draw DNA out from the wells formed in the gel because the DNA is negatively charged and it would try to move through the gel to get away from the negative side of the electric current. This allows the scientists to see it’s behavior as it moves through the gel as the smaller proteins move more quickly than the larger ones. Since DNA is colorless the scientists stain the sample in order to visualize the protein and then they can compare the sizes and patterns of the three flowers to the sizes and patterns from the plant in the
pot.

Since the scientists couldn’t use morphology to distinguish between the plants, they used the plant’s proteins to see the clear molecular differences between the three plants. The scientists learned that each parental plant makes only one variety of the “compositase” protein because it has two identical copies of that gene while the hybrid plant makes both of the proteins it carries from each variant copy of the gene it gets from confertifolia and tortifolia. The results from the Gel electrophoresis showed that X. tortifolia and X. confertifolia showed a single but different form of the “compositase” protein, but the other plant looked like a hybrid of these two patterns because it had the X. tortifolia protein and the X. confertifolia protein. This hybrid daisy was identified as X. cronquistii and it showed a similar pattern to the daisy in the pot. The botanist confirmed that plants of the same species will show the same type of pattern during the gel analysis.

The molecular evidence gives the strongest case that proves that he’s guilty. The botanist said that the Xylorhiza confertifolia is the flower that grows in the brownish soil near the shed at the Johnson Mine and that it does not grow in the gray soil. It was also said that X. tortifolia flower grew in the gray soil near the mine, but the X. cronquistii did not grow near there. This was proven because of the analysis done using the “compositase” protein. We know how rare X. cronquistii is and the State Herbarium records confirms that it grows in the looted area. This coupled with the results from the Gel electrophoresis analysis shows that X. cronquistii was the daisy found in the pot. The molecular evidence only further confirmed my verdict because it proves that he did not use the plants that grew around the shed and that X. cronquistii does not grow in the area.