KENYA FORENSIC AND GENETICS LABORATORY: BoWPK’s Academics and Informatics Training Workshop

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Through the use of world-class life sciences tools, capabilities and processes, Kenya will leapfrog older crime fighting techniques to enhance the capabilities to protect our biodiversity.

Using scientific procedures to examine, identify, and compare evidence from crime scenes, and to link the evidence with a suspect and a victim, which is specifically an animal or plant, it’s a sure way to enact progressive and stringent policies that would deter criminals as well as adopt modern technology that would assist the criminal justice system to effectively convict and grant appropriate sentences as prescribed in law to wildlife crime perpetrators.

Poaching is one of the most serious crimes investigated by wildlife forensics. The modern DNA-based molecular methods will aid in the fight against the poaching of endangered and protected species, and in the prevention of cruelty to animals. The laboratory will enable our continent to fight against poaching and offer services for all African countries especially those in the East and Central regions that are battling this new, dangerous and bloody trade.

Let’s all bridge the gap between conservation genetics and law enforcement.

Tuesday, April 15, 2014

BoWPK’s Academics and Informatics Training Workshop

Esther Wangui; sample preparation at NMK

The Barcode of Wildlife Project Kenya (BoWPK) will hold its Academics and Informatics training Workshop between 22^nd to 30^th April 2014. The objective of the workshop is to test the cost-effectiveness, scalability, and real-world impact of a DNA-based technology on the enforcement of species protection laws and treaties.

During this period, animal samples from Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) Forensic and Genetics Laboratory, and plants species from National Museums of Kenya (NMK) have been assembled to be used to isolate DNA for sequencing and subsequent preparation of DNA barcodes.

The animal samples were isolated from healthy live animals collected from different parts of the country. Samples for DNA isolation were obtained from animals free from any observable infections.

In the meantime, Consortium of Barcode of Life (CBOL) has prepared short introductory videos for each consultation and module introducing the training plan, BARCODE data standard and the extension of the standard that will be used in Barcode of Wildlife Project.

Sealed samples for the workshop

Informatics training workshop has been distributed into different modules; What is a Field Information Management System (FIMS) and FIMS spreadsheet?, Introduction and installation of Geneious, General Introduction to the Geneious software, Validating specimen data & uploading to FIMS, Importing specimen data from FIMS to LIMS, creating Extraction Plates, Creating PCR Plates, Creating Cycle Sequencing Plates, Cherry Picking, Editing Sequences, Sequence Analysis, and Uploading final data to GenBank.

Sealed samples for the workshop

Barcode of wildlife project is a collaborative project between National Museums of Kenya (NMK), Kenya wildlife Service (KWS), Consortium of Barcode of Life and Google. The project is designed as a proof-of-concept for ‘DNA barcoding’ as a system that would be used in developing countries by border inspectors, park rangers and other regulatory officials to detect illegal trafficking in protected species.

The workshop will be held at both the laboratories facilities at the Biosciences eastern and central Africa-International Livestock Research Institute (BecA-ILRI) Hub, 22-26 April for Academics Training, and the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE), an international scientific research institute, 28-30 April, for Informatics Training