The Dead Know All

Atropa - It/Its Criminology/Forensic Sciences Student [Roleplay Blog for #Project V]

[hauntingatrophy]

Introduction

Enter this desolate graveyard of wandering spirits. Feast your eyes upon the unholy, the unspoken, and the secret.

You may call me Atropa.

I study at Witherport Community College. All secrets whispered within these walls eventually reach my ears.

Ask, and you shall receive.

OOC: This is a roleplay blog for Project V! If you've stumbled upon me naturally, hello! Anything OOC will be typed in purple for ease

[greelin]

“you’re allowed to relax, you know” unfortunately i cannot do that. Otherwise they will get me

[aropride]

RULES OF BEING ALIVE

#1 NEVER SHOW WEAKNESS #2 NEVER LET YOUR GUARD DOWN #3 NEVER NEED ANYTHING #4 NEVER WANT ANYTHING #5 ALWAYS BE AFRAID

[omtai]

The lion lowkey concerns himself a little bit

[twinsfawn]

anyone else feel like there will always be a veil of separation between them and the rest of the world and that they’ll never actually be understood or is that just me

[twinsfawn]

how to move through life like a real human being and not a reanimated corpse

[holohedral]

i am not well understood. which is also my fault

[thehotelchelsea]

my wound salt that I keep beside my bed

[threedollarsdotcom]

its monday remember to cough blood into your handkerchief and faint and hit your head on a sharp corner and have a beautiful solemn funeral

[hauntingatrophy]

How would you hide a body? Living or dead.

That depends on the state of the body, your surroundings, and your tools. And, I suppose, the adequacy of your local law enforcement.

Different wildlife environments can cause faster or slow bodily decay. Smaller towns that aren’t properly equipped for this kind of search may find it harder to triangulate the right evidence, or may not have hounds for scent tracking, etc.

Also, I suppose it depends on the state of the scene, for a dead body. It becomes more difficult the more of a mess you make.

[hauntingatrophy]

Why do you hate me?

I don’t even know you????

[hauntingatrophy]

Wow, who the fuck is Isi???? Can't I congratulate a bitch for pulling another???

Not when you’re calling me a bitch, no.

[hauntingatrophy]

Wow! Congrats on being a disaster lesbian! We're all rooting for you. <3

I KNOW THIS ONE IS FROM YOU, ISI. FUCK OFF.

[hauntingatrophy]

You are the only one who uses the hearts like this out of that gods forsaken group.

[hauntingatrophy]

Wow! Congrats on being a disaster lesbian! We're all rooting for you. <3

I KNOW THIS ONE IS FROM YOU, ISI. FUCK OFF.

[hauntingatrophy]

Congrats on the lesbianism, prez!

Cillian, when I get you, Cillian.

I’M NOT THE STUDENT COUNCIL PRESIDENT.

[hauntingatrophy]

Prez, how did you meet Marie? Why is she so dedicated to you?

Why do so many of you think that I’m the class president? Aren’t the Belladonnas supposed to be proud of their identities? You’d think the prez would be screaming it from the rooftops.

[justkidneying]

Forensics: DNA fingerprinting

I think a lot of people assume that when someone's DNA is run to match them to crime scene evidence, the entire sequence is read out and matched to the entire sequence of the sample. That's not true. What we're actually looking for are small areas of repeats.

So what is deoxyribose nucleic acid? It's made of a deoxyribose backbone with repeating bases, either adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G) or thymine (T). Two strands are made and held together in a ladder-like fashion by the pairing of two bases. A binds to T and C binds to G. That's how it's stored, anyway. For DNA to be read and proteins made, we have to split it apart. That's also what we do when we perform polymerase chain reactions (PCR). That allows us to make millions of copies of DNA from a single sample. I won't go into the details here (i find that shit boring as hell tbh).

So when we have a DNA sample, we look at what's called short tandem repeats (STRs). These are highly polymorphic hypervariable areas within the genome. The repeats are usually 4-6 base pairs long and repeat between 4 to 40 times (typically).

STRs are found at certain places (loci) in the genome and are inheritable. You inherit and different number of repeats at each STR locus from your mom and dad. Therefore, two unrelated people are unlikely to have the same pair of sequences at an STR locus. Although people can have bands of repeats in common, it is overall a distinct pattern in each person. This unique pattern is your DNA fingerprint. Even looking at 5-10 loci, the odds that you and someone you aren't related to would have the same fingerprint is 1 in 10 billion.

Some people will say that isn't true (namely the people who wrote the wikipedia page that says that *a study claimed* that DNA fingerprinting is wrong, even though that isn't what the study says), but I know several geneticists (yk the people with PhDs in genetics) who have told me that there is almost no chance DNA evidence is wrong. The FBI uses it for a reason. It works.

You can fingerprint for paternity tests, or more interestingly, for crimes. Hair, blood, etc. it all has DNA, and it can all be sequenced like this. Now you know.