I enter the loft and find Ivy busy on the ground floor. I can barely see her red hair over stacks of books, beakers, burners,microscopes and one large gray machines that hums. Ivy goes back to the postcard and studies it. She turns to her computer and types in her findings into the microsatellite data base. She turns in her chair and finally speaks. "Thanks to forensic botany and micro-satellite-based genotyping the (STR) short tandem repeats and (SSR) simple sequence I can find specific cultivars indigenous to one area. The repeats is a location of a genome where a short nucleotide seqence is located ." She says while typing in some words on her keyboard.
I peer over her shoulder in bewilderment. "What I am basically doing is looking at SSR, cultivar discrimination, assignment test, and private alleles. Now many trees actually have lables. The would make my job too easy. Some may be made with anodized aluminum that are embossed. They use a datacard and put in nformation such as it's scientific name, accession number, plant family ,accession date, location ,common name, propagation material and source and data collection in case it is exported. Any GLONASS or global navigation satellite system can pick it up. This is real-time data and all you need is an annual subscription fee and a gps receiver. The very first case to use forensic botany was with the Lindbergh baby kidnapping back in 1939 and molecular biology was recognized in court in 1992 in Arizona. By matching up the seed pods from the suspects truck and those found near the victim's body were studied. Now forensic botany is used constantly to aid in crime!" She rattles like the true bonafide botanist she is!
"I ...I ..I am amazed Ivy!" I stammer.
Ivy is now smiling elated with her research. She ponts to her notes and her ab equipment. "I take my DNA extraction and isolate it then I have PCR primers labled with flourescent tags and PCR amplification. I check by locus one, two, three etc then I use my Genemapper software. It prints it up on spreadsheets for me showing allele size and density."
"Uhhh okay." I respond.
Ivy points now to a map on her laptop of Italy. "Pack your leopard print bikini. I have a match. We are off to Italy. The Blue Grotto to be exact in Capri!
"Italy?" I yell.