Among the extracurricular activities that I’m quietly involved in (research is A. #1 priority!), is tutoring high school kids in the local high schools. You know, get them excited about learning! I know, your gag reflex is working overtime right now. Nevertheless, a couple of my classmates and I decided to host some highschoolers here in the teaching labs and conduct a “murder mystery” complete with DNA samples and mugshots. The idea was that they’d have to collect their own hard evidence, analyze it, and determine the murderer (sometimes science is so fun I can hardly contain my excitement).

So, there’s a kit from BioRad that comes complete with everything you need to execute some DNA fingerprinting on the DNA that was found at the ‘crime scene’ and unequivocally prove who killed whom. All you have to do is come up with the story to go with the the DNA provided in the kit, and teach a bunch of kids how to use hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment without having a heart attack. With the sensibilities of our nation’s youth in mind we designed the following heinous murder:

At an award ceremony for C-list commercial actors, the Geico Caveman is clubbed over the head and killed.  Several other actors with various possible motives were at the scene.  Unfortunately, their accounts of the incident are varied and unreliable (after all, people are fallible – especially graduate students – and that’s why we turn to science!)  So, here are the mugshots:

A sinister bunch, if you ask me.

I suppose I better get back to work before my PI finds me.  Fortunately, I’ve rigged her computer so she can only read parentheticals in blog posts.