The research that will be conducted will answer the question: How does the evolution of the THC Synthase gene affects the physical and chemical traits, of the Cannabis genus? Supporting questions surrounding our main research question include: Is there conservation within the paralogs of THC Synthase? Do these paralogs produce functional proteins? Are certain paralogs unique to certain strains? We will be researching duplicated genes of THC Synthase that recently became prevalent due to new sequencing abilities and an assembly of the cannabis genome given to our lab by Steep Hill Labs, Inc. We will be conducting our research is within the lab of Dr. Nolan Kane, under the supervision of Dr. Daniela Vergara and Dr. Nolan Kane. The Kane Lab’s…show more content… We also attempted to develop a universal primer for the THC synthase locus, although it was completed by another research team during that attempt, and we have now begun building upon the results of using the universal primer in PCR and performing gel electrophoresis. Our previous experience with PCR, gel electrophoresis, dna purification, analyzing sequence data, and constructing phylogenetic trees will let us complete our research efficiently and allow us to still build our knowledge of this growing field of Cannabis…show more content… In order to complete this, we will work together on all aspects of this project, including the design of primers with enough base pairs (letters of DNA) to both efficiently and accurately target the gene of interest during amplification. We will first need to determine the sequence of each paralog of the THC Synthase gene using a universal primers to amplify the sequences that we will be used to design the primers for each paralog. This step should take approximately 20 hours to complete. Around 30 hours will be dedicated to this primer design, which will be done by testing possible primers generated from the Primer3 program (http://primer3plus.com/). This step should be completed by December 10th, 2015. The verification of these primers is estimated to take 20 hours, and checking the specificity will consist of another 20 hours to be completed by February 15th. Enhancement of the specificity of the primers will take an additional 20 hours, and re-checking the specificity of the modified primers will take 10 hours more to be fulfilled by April 1st, 2016. The compilation of data into the final report is estimated to take an additional 15 hours of work per group member, which will be concluded by May 1st, 2016. We, with the guidance of our