Olisdey Galano Cruz

Contributing to ongoing research on postmortem interval (PMI) determination to enhance methods for establishing the time of death in unwitnessed cases. Responsibilities include performing laboratory maintenance, managing critical supplies, and ensuring adherence to biohazard safety and quality control standards.

Autoclaving and Sterilization:

• Operate the autoclave for sterilizing lab materials.
• Follow established procedures to ensure proper sterilization.
• Dry sterilized supplies in a dry incubator at 55°C for further laboratory use.

Supervision:

• Supervise laboratory to maintain a safe and efficient working environment.

Supply Management:

• Monitor and manage the inventory of reagents for DNA extraction, amplification, and other downstream processes.
• Ensure the availability of essentials such as ethanol, chlorine, and Lysol to maintain a clean and contamination-free workspace

Hood Maintenance:

• Conduct regular cleaning and maintenance of the extraction hood and pre-PCR hood.

Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) Instrument Maintenance:

• Perform routine maintenance on the Illumina MiSeq FGx instrument to ensure optimal functionality, including:
• Pre- and post-run washes to maintain the instrument's performance and reduce contamination risks.
• Weekly maintenance washes to uphold operational standards and/or monthly standby washes to preserve the system during periods of low activity.

The presence of a person's DNA at a crime scene does not necessarily indicate that the sample donor is the perpetrator. Understanding and knowing the time frame during which the biological stain was left behind can be crucial to solving a case.

• Conducting research on how various clothing and non-clothing substrates, as well as storage time, influence the microbiomes associated with human saliva for estimating time since deposition (TSD).
• Utilizing the QIAamp DNA Investigator Kit for extraction of DNA from saliva samples, processing amplification through the Applied Biosystems Thermal Cycler platform, and sequencing the library on the Illumina MiSeq FGx system.
• Preprocessing raw data to enhance the overall quality of the sequencing results.
• Evaluating the impact of various factors on the accuracy of bacterial signature-based methods for determining the time since deposition.
• Supervising laboratory and equipment maintenance to ensure optimal operational conditions and compliance with established quality standards.