New! Sign up for our free email newsletter.
Science News
from research organizations

Crime Scene Investigates: The Case Of The Dead Cow

Date:
April 7, 2006
Source:
Society for Experimental Biology
Summary:
Forensic fingerprinting of plant DNA is being investigated as a way to identify offending poisonous plants -- a major cause of death in livestock in countries such as Ghana.
Share:
FULL STORY

Forensic fingerprinting of plant DNA is being investigated as a way to identify offending poisonous plants -- a major cause of death in livestock in countries such as Ghana.

Charles Domozoro, of the University of Aberdeen, described how he uses plant DNA from the animal's stomach for forensic fingerprinting recently at the Society for Experimental Biology's Annual Main Meeting, in Canterbury. "Knowing the offending plants will help us to manage the poisoning outbreak by targeting specific treatment routines or withdrawing livestock from infested pastures", says Domozoro.

Since the identifying features of plants are rapidly digested in the stomach of herbivores it is often difficult to tell if and how an animal has been poisoned. Such misdiagnoses are costly to the agricultural industry and also mean that statistics on how widespread is poisoning are inaccurate. The practical application of this technique means that when a cow or sheep dies, if a sample of the rumen contents is taken within a day, it can be stored or used immediately to determine if plant poisoning was the cause of death.

Domozoro uses plant material, extracted from Ghanaian animals within 24 hours of death, as the template to amplify specific DNA sequences to give a plant-fingerprint: this is specific to the species of plant present in the animal's rumen. Domozoro has affiliations with the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research in Ghana and so the first database he has used to search for a match consists of the known DNA sequences of ~40 poisonous Ghanaian plant species. This only represents a fraction of the known poisonous plants in Ghana and there is a need to keep expanding the database. The technique could be used to identify poisonous plants from any country as long as their DNA sequence is known: "The procedure can be applied anywhere, but the reference database will need to be carefully selected to include the geographical range", explains Domozoro.



Story Source:

Materials provided by Society for Experimental Biology. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


Cite This Page:

Society for Experimental Biology. "Crime Scene Investigates: The Case Of The Dead Cow." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 7 April 2006. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/04/060406102755.htm>.
Society for Experimental Biology. (2006, April 7). Crime Scene Investigates: The Case Of The Dead Cow. ScienceDaily. Retrieved March 28, 2024 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/04/060406102755.htm
Society for Experimental Biology. "Crime Scene Investigates: The Case Of The Dead Cow." ScienceDaily. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/04/060406102755.htm (accessed March 28, 2024).

Explore More

from ScienceDaily

RELATED STORIES