Pete Hollingsworth, an expert on horticultural DNA with the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, is teaching police officers from Brazil how to use plant "barcoding" equipment to determining whether material comes from protected species, according to The Scotsman.
Renato Paranaiba is a forensics expert with the Brazilian Federal Police. "I am used to working with bones more than plants," he told the Scotsman, "but over the past few years there has been a move to combat environmental crime here-focused on the Amazonian-regions. Our government wants to do more to combat this crime and we have permanent environmental crime operations now in Brazil but although human and animal DNA is established in our police work, we know little about plant DNA, so this is all new for me. We want to join the vanguard."
To analyze plant DNA, a sample is first ground to a powder and then placed in a centrifuge tube. The DNA is separated while it's spun, and the DNA is then suspended in a gel. The DNA can then be compared to known plant samples.
