Teaching Phylogeny and Direction of Viral Transmission using a Real HIV Criminal Case

 

Tested Studies in Laboratory Teaching, 2018, Volume 39

Kuei-Chiu Chen & Dalia Zakaria

Abstract

Teaching phylogenetics often faces the challenge in making this topic interesting and relevant. This exercise uses a real criminal case described in the original PNAS publication about how a physician in Louisiana deliberately injected his ex-girlfriend with HIV from a patient under his care. During teaching sequences of HIV genes obtained from the patient, the ex-girlfriend, and HIV-positive individuals not related to the case are analyzed using a free version of CLC Main Workbench software to analyze phylogeny of the viral sequences. The results not only indicated the close relationship in the viral gene sequences obtained from the ex-girlfriend and the patient, it also suggested the direction of transmission by using the concept of basal, derived, sister taxa, monophyly and paraphyly in phylogeny interpretation. To present additional relevance, instructors may mention that this case has established a precedent in using phylogenetics to convict a person in the US criminal court.

Keywords:  case-based learning, HIV, case studies, case study, molecular phylogeny, monophyly, paraphyly, criminal case, reverse transcriptase, pol gene, env gene

University of Wisconsin, Madison (2017)