Annotation of a Reported Sasquatch Gene Locus Tag >KJ155708.1

Advisor: Lon Knappenberger

Student Researchers: Joanna Seminatore and Leah Tredo

Abstract: In the July 2, 2014 issue of the Journal of the The Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Science Volume 281, Issue 2014.0161, Sykes, Mullis, Hagenmuller, Melton, and Sartori conducted a comprehensive genetic survey of 57 individual and museum collected specimens to explore their identity. The purpose of this project was to verify the claims of the owners of the samples regarding the existence of Sasquatch or Bigfoot. Sequences cited in the article are stored in GenBank and translated into six reading frames using http://insilico.ehu.es/translate/. Protein BLASTs were conducted of the results. Multiple sequence alignments and phylogenetic trees were constructed comparing the sequence to other primates, North American mammals and domesticated mammals to determine the source of the sequence. The top matches were all from from Homo sapiens (humans) and that is where the DNA was sourced from.

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