This Is a True Story

question 65

Not Answered

This is a true story. A gastroenterologist from Lafayette, LA was accused of infecting his girlfriend with HIV by injecting her with a syringe containing HIV-infected blood from one of his patients. The victim (the girlfriend) claimed that the doctor injected her during an argument. However, the victim was also a nurse and so conceivably may have had contact with HIV-infected blood through her job. Given below is a phylogenetic tree constructed using HIV sequences from the victim (denoted with a V in the label), HIV sequences from the patient whose blood was allegedly in the syringe that the doctor injected into the victim (denoted by a P in the label), and HIV sequences representing much of the diversity of HIV strains from the Lafayette area during the time of the incident (denoted by LA in the label). Is the tree consistent with the prosecution's case that the doctor injected the victim with HIV-infected blood from his patient? Why or why not?

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Definitions:

For Loop

A control flow statement for specifying iteration, allowing code to be executed repeatedly based on a given boolean condition.

Initialize

The process of assigning an initial value to a variable or data structure.

Array Indexed Variables

Variables in an array that are accessed using their index positions within the array.

Arguments

Values or variables passed to a function, procedure, or command that influence its execution or operation.