2012-03-26 16:24

Johannesburg - A DNA test has confirmed that the human remains discovered at a house in Temba, outside Pretoria, are those of slain police Constable Francis Rasuge, Gauteng police said on Monday.

Lieutenant Colonel Katlego Mogale said the DNA was analysed by a forensic science laboratory.

Construction workers came across the bones while laying a foundation at the house of her murderer William Nkuna on March 20.

The police's K9 Unit and the forensic laboratory later uncovered several bones including a skull.

Rasuge went missing on August 27 2004. She was last seen alive with Nkuna outside a hairdressing salon in Temba.

During an interview with Radio 702 at the time, Nkuna claimed that he missed Rasuge and that he was not be sure whether she was alive.

Speculation on remains of Rasuge

Judge Ronald Hendricks sentenced Nkuna, in the Mmabatho Circuit Court sitting in Ga-Rankuwa, to life imprisonment in November 2005 even though her body had not been found.

At the time of Nkuna's trial, widespread appeals were made for him to reveal the whereabouts of Rasuge's remains.

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DNA test confirms Rasuge remains

A thief wearing gloves walks into a parking lot, perhaps using the cover of night, smashes a car window and takes whats inside the vehicle, all in a matter of minutes.

Its the general technique for many car burglaries, and thousands of them occur in Harris County, Texas, every year. Besides shattered glass, often theres not much visible evidence left at the scene, leaving investigators with few clues to catch the culprits.

But sometimes its what investigators cannot see that helps solve many of these types of crimes.

For the last few years, the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences aided area law enforcement in solving property crimes by testing evidence for touch DNA microscopic skin cells containing DNA that naturally rub off when an object, like a car steering wheel, is touched. The technology can be used even if the suspect is wearing gloves because theres a high likelihood the skin cells were transferred onto the gloves when the perpetrator was slipping them on.

It was a pretty incredible tool for us to have to identify some of these suspects, said Sgt. Terry Wilson, of the Harris County Sheriffs Office auto-theft division. These (burglary of a motor vehicle) cases are some of the hardest cases for law enforcement to solve because theres almost never any eyewitnesses. Theres very rarely any good evidence left behind, fingerprint evidence and things like that, and once we started recovering some of this DNA, it was pretty exciting there for a while.

DNA testing is a practice typically reserved for personal crimes like rape and murder. However, the forensic institute, formerly the medical examiners office, has also been performing DNA testing on evidence containing either skin cells or bodily fluids, like blood and saliva from property crime cases such as car break-ins and home invasions.

Since January 2008, the forensic institute made more than 3,000 matches to crime suspects in the FBIs Combined DNA Index System database, or CODIS, a national database used to store DNA profiles. Of those, about 75 percent were for property crime cases.

Dr. Roger Kahn, director of the forensic genetics laboratory at the institute, said the crime lab is one of the few equipped to handle DNA testing for property crimes. The lab has no testing backlog on personal crime cases, so it can focus on property crimes, he said.

Kahn noted that when the forensic institute moves to its new expanded facility in the fall, the lab will have the capabilities to perform DNA testing in property crime cases for not only law enforcement agencies in the county, but the entire region.

Kahn believes it is a useful tool in solving many more crimes.

Link:
Texas Police Use DNA Technique to Solve Property Crime

MISGAV, Israel & SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

Medgenics, Inc. (NYSE Amex: MDGN and AIM: MEDU, MEDG), the developer of a novel technology for the sustained production and delivery of therapeutic proteins in patients using their own tissue, today announced that it has received formal notification of recommendations from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee (RAC) reflecting the Companys successful presentation of study findings during a meeting held on March 8, 2012. Completion of the RAC process is an important step in advancing toward the Companys proposed U.S. Phase II clinical study evaluating the safety and efficacy of sustained erythropoietin (EPO) therapy delivered via the Companys EPODURE Biopump for the treatment of anemia in dialysis patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD).

The RAC meeting was attended by an audience from the general public and was webcast live. An archive of this webcast is available at http://videocast.nih.gov/summary.asp?Live=11074.

EPODURE is an autologous dermal Biopump capable of the sustained secretion of therapeutic EPO in the body using a small tissue explant from the patients own skin. The EPODURE Biopump is subsequently implanted subcutaneously into the patient to provide continuous delivery of EPO.

We are delighted that the RAC has given such positive responses regarding our proposed Phase II clinical protocol for EPODURE to treat ESRD and we have already addressed most of their recommendations in our study planning, said Andrew L. Pearlman, Ph.D., President and Chief Executive Officer of Medgenics. Clinical trials involving recombinant DNA products intended to be conducted in the U.S. generally need to satisfy review by the RAC, which iswidely recognized as a most thorough scientific and clinical review by leading experts in relevant areas. Key to this positive response was the safety and sustained clinical activity we showed from the EPODURE Phase I/II trial conducted in Israel. We believe the RAC recommendations can be incorporated into our proposed protocol without difficulty and will not pose any significant delay or expense. Following a positive pre-Investigational New Drug (IND) application meeting with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) last fall, completion of the RAC process clears an important hurdle toward the successful submission of our IND application and is a significant step in implementing our clinical strategy.

We look forward to submitting our IND to the FDA in the coming months and to obtaining FDA clearance for our Phase II clinical trial, which we expect will affirm the positive results from our earlier Phase I/II study of EPODURE in pre-dialysis patients, added Dr. Pearlman. In that study we demonstrated that a single administration can raise and maintain hemoglobin levels for many months without any injections of erythropoietin stimulating agents.

About Anemia

Anemia is a common complication of renal failure resulting primarily from insufficient production of the hormone EPO by the damaged kidneys, which leads to a decrease in production of red blood cells. Treatment with EPO typically involves intravenous or subcutaneous administration by injection at regular intervals followed by frequent laboratory tests to monitor hemoglobin concentration. Due to the short half-life of the protein, it is usually administered at doses that result in super physiological levels, which then decline into a more physiologic range. This variability in levels, and in particular the peak levels which then decline into a more physiologic range. This variability in levels, and in particular the peak levels, has been hypothesized to potentially increase the risk of adverse cardiovascular effects and may make maintenance of steady hemoglobin levels more challenging. The need for frequent injections and laboratory tests, medication compliance and lifestyle adjustment are potential barriers to achieving the desired hemoglobin goal. These barriers, together with the high costs of the currently available recombinant EPO products, provide an incentive to improve care with a sustained therapy approach.

About the National Institutes of Health Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee

The objective of the Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee is to provide advice to the Director of the NIH on matters related to the conduct and oversight of research involving recombinant DNA, including the content and implementation of the NIH Guidelines for Research Involving Recombinant DNA Molecules and other NIH activities pertinent to recombinant DNA technology. The RAC comprises experts in a wide range of scientific and medical disciplines and also includes medical ethicists and members of patient and other lay communities. Because of the dedication, effort, and thoughtful contributions of its members over the past 30 years, the RAC has been a vital national forum promoting critically important scientific progress in a transparent, responsible, and safe manner and enhancing public trust in the science.

The rest is here:
Medgenics Reports Positive Meeting With NIH Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee

Newswise Researchers have devised a nanoscale sensor to electronically read the sequence of a single DNA molecule, a technique that is fast and inexpensive and could make DNA sequencing widely available.

The technique could lead to affordable personalized medicine, potentially revealing predispositions for afflictions such as cancer, diabetes or addiction.

"There is a clear path to a workable, easily produced sequencing platform," said Jens Gundlach, a University of Washington physics professor who leads the research team. "We augmented a protein nanopore we developed for this purpose with a molecular motor that moves a DNA strand through the pore a nucleotide at a time."

The researchers previously reported creating the nanopore by genetically engineering a protein pore from a mycobacterium. The nanopore, from Mycobacterium smegmatis porin A, has an opening 1 billionth of a meter in size, just large enough for a single DNA strand to pass through.

To make it work as a reader, the nanopore was placed in a membrane surrounded by potassium-chloride solution, with a small voltage applied to create an ion current flowing through the nanopore. The electrical signature changes depending on the type of nucleotide traveling through the nanopore. Each type of DNA nucleotide cytosine, guanine, adenine and thymine produces a distinctive signature.

The researchers attached a molecular motor, taken from an enzyme associated with replication of a virus, to pull the DNA strand through the nanopore reader. The motor was first used in a similar effort by researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, but they used a different pore that could not distinguish the different nucleotide types.

Gundlach is the corresponding author of a paper published online March 25 by Nature Biotechnology that reports a successful demonstration of the new technique using six different strands of DNA. The results corresponded to the already known DNA sequence of the strands, which had readable regions 42 to 53 nucleotides long.

"The motor pulls the strand through the pore at a manageable speed of tens of milliseconds per nucleotide, which is slow enough to be able to read the current signal," Gundlach said.

Gundlach said the nanopore technique also can be used to identify how DNA is modified in a given individual. Such modifications, referred to as epigenetic DNA modifications, take place as chemical reactions within cells and are underlying causes of various conditions.

"Epigenetic modifications are rather important for things like cancer," he said. Being able to provide DNA sequencing that can identify epigenetic changes "is one of the charms of the nanopore sequencing method."

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Tiny Reader Makes Fast, Cheap DNA Sequencing Feasible

By Alex Wayne - Mon Mar 26 17:17:10 GMT 2012

Jan. 30 (Bloomberg) -- Greg Lucier, chief executive officer of Life Technologies Corp., talks about the company's DNA sequencer and the results of his own genome sequencing done last year. Lucier spoke with Bloomberg's John Lauerman on Oct. 4, 2011. (Source: Bloomberg)

Obtaining a complete transcript of a persons DNA is getting faster and cheaper, raising ethical and privacy questions that the government must examine, a U.S. presidential commission said.

The panel said today it wants public input on developments in human genome sequencing, including how to balance individual privacy against societal benefits. The Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, an advisory panel set up in 2009, plans to send President Barack Obama a report by the end of the year.

Translating an entire human genome required more than a decade of research and billions of dollars by the governments Human Genome Project, which completed the first sequence in 2003. Now, Oxford Nanopore Technologies Ltd. plans to sell a genome sequencer the size of a USB memory stick for $900 by the end of this year and companies including Life Technologies Corp. (LIFE) and Illumina Inc. (ILMN) promise genomes sequenced in a day.

Relatively inexpensive, rapid sequencing of whole human genomes appears not only likely, but imminent, the commission said in a regulatory filing. This prospect raises many questions for the scientific, medical, ethics and patient communities related to how this information can and ought to be collected, used and regulated.

Public comments are due by May 25, and the panel plans to spend six months on its research.

To contact the reporter on this story: Alex Wayne in Washington at awayne3@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Reg Gale at rgale5@bloomberg.net

More:
DNA Mapped in a Day Prompts U.S. Review of Genome Ethics

By Ben Butkus

DNA Electronics will begin pre-clinical pilot trials later this year to prepare its rapid, handheld, semiconductor-based DNA testing platform for clinical diagnostic use, the company said this week.

To that end, the London-based company will collaborate with the lab of Eric Topol at Scripps Research Institute in the area of pharmacogenetic analysis for Plavix response; and with an unspecified lab at St. Mary's University College in London in the area of infectious disease testing, PCR Insider has learned.

PCR Insider spoke with DNA Electronics CEO Chris Toumazou and CTO Leila Shepherd this week following the company's announcement that it had inked an agreement granting skincare company GeneOnyx access to its point-of-care genetic testing device, called Genalysis, to provide rapid, over-the-counter genetic testing to consumers for the purposes of recommending genetically tailored cosmetic products.

The deal with GeneOnyx is the "first significant license" for DNA Electronics' testing platform, but is just the tip of the iceberg, Toumazou said, as the company is now in the throes of honing the platform for in vitro diagnostics use.

"We've been in stealth mode, and we're excited that [Genalysis] is working now," Toumazou said. "The key objective still is to tackle the healthcare and clinical market. But in the past year there has been all this hype about handheld genetic devices, but we don't know anything to date that actually works. We wanted to make sure the world sees that we have something that works, and works well, so we're applying it to a setting that can demonstrate that. That's why we decided to partner with GeneOnyx."

DNA Electronics' current molecular diagnostics work actually brings the company full circle to its earliest days, when it spun out of Imperial College London to commercialize the discovery that when nucleotide pairs come together during DNA synthesis, they release hydrogen ions, which can be detected as an electrical signal on a complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor, or CMOS chip.

"We patented that idea, and we spun out DNA Electronics in 2002 with aspirations from the very beginning to create a handheld diagnostic technology," Toumazou said. But, he added, the company first applied the technology "to what [we thought] was the really growing field, which was DNA sequencing."

As a result, DNA Electronics negotiated first a non-exclusive license with Ion Torrent, which adopted the technology as part of its next-generation sequencing platform now called the PGM and sold by Life Technologies, which acquired Ion Torrent in late 2010. After that deal, DNA Electronics then forged a partnership with Roche 454 to integrate the technology into a competing sequencing platform.

"While all that was taking place, which was really a good way of bringing in revenues, we had a team incubating our holy grail, which was this microchip-based diagnostic device," Toumazou said.

Read the rest here:
DNAe Plans Pilot Trials of Handheld Semiconductor DNA Testing Platform for PGx, Infectious Disease

ST. LOUIS A jailhouse scuffle last year left Jimmy Love-El with some bumps, some bruises and a mistrial in the double homicide case against him.

The fight may have been his lucky break.

A circuit court judge called off the trial on its third day on concerns that injuries from the fight, involving a friend of one of the victims, could prejudice the jury.

In the time since, DNA evidence has surfaced that Love-El's attorneys say support his defense that someone else shot two men Jan. 11, 2009, in a Schnucks parking lot during a drug deal gone bad.

The DNA hit matching a convicted drug offender to a cup found in the car where the two men were killed is contentious for another reason. A St. Louis police detective didn't disclose the DNA result for four months after he was notified of it, leaving the defense to hear of the evidence just four days before the retrial. As a result, that trial has been pushed back. Love-El remains in jail, waiting to see how the DNA test will affect his case.

The episode has prompted a mea culpa from police, with a promise of better procedures going forward to inform defendants of evidence that could help them.

THE CRIME

Prosecutors argued in the interrupted trial in June 2011 that Love-El killed Dewon Curry and Archie White because he was a drug user who needed a fix.

Curry, 23, and White, 22, were parked outside the Schnucks store in the 3400 block of Union Boulevard when Love-El allegedly pulled in around 6:30 p.m. They wanted $1,200 for an ounce of crack cocaine, but Love-El found a way to get it for free, prosecutors said.

They alleged that he climbed into the back seat of the victims' Mercury Marquis, pulled out a gun and shot each man in the head. He took their cellphones and drugs but accidentally left behind a brown glove that testing would show contained his DNA, officials said.

Read the rest here:
After mistrial, DNA factors into double-murder case

Can this USB stick change biology research? Photo: Oxford Nanopore

What if you could put a few bacterial cells into a USB stick, plug it into your laptop, and get back a complete DNA sequence in a matter of minutes?

Oxford Nanopore has built a USB device that will do just that. At least, thats what the company says. Known as MinION, the device received a hefty amount of press when it was announced in February, and its slated for release to the world at large in the second half of the year. But many are still skeptical that this tiny device will do what its designed to do.

If [the claims] are true, wed buy it tomorrow, Jonathan Eisen, a microbiology professor at the University of California at Davis. But Im reserving judgment. Weve heard many presentations from companies where these things dont pan out.

Clive Brown, Oxfords chief technology officer, tells Wired that the MinION works as advertised. You put a handful of lysed cells cells whose membranes have been dissolved into a small container built into the USB drive. You plug the drive into an ordinary PC. And depending on the length of the DNA in those cells, youll have a complete sequence in somewhere between a few minutes to a few hours. The device is the result of seven years of research, Brown says, and it sells for $900.

For Eisen, the cost alone would make the MinION a game changer. But its also attractive because its portable. Eisen says that with a device like the MinION, field researchers would have sequencing at their fingertips at all times, whether theyre on a remote mountain somewhere or out at sea looking at algae blooms. This really would be the democratization of sequencing, he says. Anyone in any research environment would consider doing large scale sequencing in their project.

But he still wants to see it action before he says any more.

In biological research, the order of DNAs four building blocks called base pairs is essential to understanding the underlying mechanisms of an organisms existence. Short for deoxyribonucleic acid, DNA along with a handful of supporting molecules dictates the protein structures and development of every creature on the planet. DNA length varies by organism ranging from the thousands of basepairs for bacteria to billions for mammals so tools that quickly read this molecular instruction manual are imperative for biological research.

Oxford aims for DNA sequencing in the wild. Image: Frank Kehren/Flickr

The market for DNA sequencing is a crowded one. Companies such as Illumina and Sequetech build large machines that sit alongside a lab bench, and Ion Torrent, a subsidiary of Life Technologies, will soon release a benchtop sequencer that it says will read the entire human genome roughly three billion base pairs in a day. But Oxford is the first to put this sort of device on an ordinary laptop.

Link:
Can You Really Sequence DNA With a USB Thumb Drive?

Published: March. 21, 2012 at 3:34 PM

HOUSTON, March 21 (UPI) -- A DNA test revealed Wednesday an 8-year-old Houston boy is the same child allegedly kidnapped by his godmother when he was a baby.

A judge announced Wednesday the test had confirmed Fernando Morin is the biological father of Miguel Morin, who had been living with Aubion Champion-Morin and Fernando Morin when he disappeared. Test results from Champion-Morin had not yet come back.

KHOU-TV, Houston, said the couple would be seeking visitation rights with the boy once the maternal DNA test results are released.

Miguel was in a foster home Wednesday and will remain there pending a March 28 hearing, KHOU said.

Child Protective Services said Miguel believes his name is Jaquan, and his godmother, Krystal Tanner, who is currently in jail, is his mom. A CPS psychologist warned the judge Wednesday Miguel has development issues and his life could be thrown into turmoil if he is reintroduced to his biological family.

KHOU said Miguel's four siblings all live with yet another couple who have said Champion-Morin had turned the children over to them to raise because she could not handle the responsibility. They have also said they doubted Tanner had kidnapped the boy.

Read more:
DNA confirms identity of Houston boy

Public release date: 22-Mar-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Jeremy Moore jeremy.moore@aacr.org 215-446-7109 American Association for Cancer Research

PHILADELPHIA Scientists have uncovered a marker of DNA damage that could predict who will respond to platinum-based chemotherapy drugs like cisplatin or carboplatin.

These drugs are widely used for ovarian cancer, but as with most cancer drugs, it can be difficult to predict who will respond to therapy.

A team of researchers from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute found that this marker, telomeric allelic imbalance or tAI, could predict sensitivity to therapy in patients with triple-negative breast cancer.

The results are published in Cancer Discovery, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

"We currently do not have any targeted therapies for patients with triple-negative breast cancer, so if these laboratory findings are confirmed and an assay is created to predict sensitivity to drugs that target defective DNA repair, it would be a major step forward," said lead pathologist Andrea Richardson, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of medicine at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Scientists have long known that DNA repair status is a predictor of sensitivity to therapy and thus prognosis. However, measurements of DNA repair status have been slow to arrive.

Richardson and colleagues looked for genomic signatures in cell lines and tumors and correlated them to platinum sensitivity.

In patients with triple-negative breast cancer, they found that a high level of subchromosomal regions with allelic imbalance extended to the telomere predicted response to cisplatin treatment. The same was true for serous ovarian cancer.

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Marker of DNA damage could predict response to platinum chemotherapy

Marker identifies tumors unable to repair DNA damage by platinum agents

Newswise BOSTONScientists from Brigham and Women's Hospital and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and their colleagues have found a genetic marker that predicts which aggressive "triple negative" breast cancers and certain ovarian cancers will likely respond to platinum-based chemotherapies.

The marker, found on chromosomes within the cancer cells, could lead to a test for identifying patients whose cancers could be effectively treated by a single platinum-based drug, "and avoid the toxicities of other chemotherapy combinations," says Andrea Richardson, MD, PhD, co senior author of the study and a surgical pathologist at Brigham and Women's and Dana-Farber.

The report is being published in the April issue of Cancer Discovery, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

Many cancer treatments work by damaging DNA within tumor cells, rendering the cells unable to grow and divide. While some cancer cells can readily repair broken DNA molecules, allowing them to survive drug or radiation therapy, others have lost this repair capacity, making them vulnerable to DNA-damaging agents.

The new marker, Richardson says, flags breast and ovarian cancer cells that can't repair the type of DNA damage caused by treatment with platinum drugs, including cisplatin and carboplatin. A clinical test for the marker could be particularly valuable in treating triple-negative breast cancers, which are resistant to anti-hormonal therapies or targeted drugs like Herceptin.

"We currently do not have any targeted therapies for patients with triple-negative breast cancer, so if these laboratory findings are confirmed and an assay is created to predict sensitivity to drugs that target defective DNA repair, it would be a major step forward," says Richardson, the primary pathologist for the study. However, she adds, such an assay isn't likely to be developed soon.

The new genetic marker was discovered when Richardson and others studied tumor tissue collected from triple negative breast cancer patients who participated in two clinical trials of platinum drug therapy. Triple-negative tumors develop in about 80 percent of women who carry mutated breast cancer genes BRCA1 and BRCA2. These tumors are characterized by a lack of estrogen, progesterone, and HER2 receptors, which makes them unresponsive to targeted treatments that block those receptors.

The two clinical trials, led by Judy Garber, MD, MPH, of Dana-Farber, were investigating whether platinum drugs would also be effective in so-called "sporadic" triple negative tumors -- those that develop in the absence of BRCA1 and BRCA2 genetic mutations. Overall, about 20 percent of breast cancers are triple negative. Some of these cancers respond to standard chemotherapy drugs, while others don't. The patients whose triple negative tumors do not go away after chemotherapy have a particularly poor prognosis.

A total of 79 patients in the two trials received cisplatin alone or in combination with bevacizumab (Avastin) to shrink their tumors prior to removing them surgically. In both trials, approximately 40 percent of patients had a complete or near-complete disappearance of the cancer after the cisplatin therapy.

View post:
DNA Marker Predicts Platinum Drug Response in Breast, Ovarian Cancer

HOUSTON (AP) DNA test results disclosed Wednesday confirmed a Houston man is the father of a boy found in East Texas last week after he and his wife said they reported him missing eight years ago when he was an infant.

Fernando Morin and Auboni Champion-Morin are seeking to regain custody of the child, Miguel, who's been in foster care since last week. The wife's results were not yet complete, child welfare officials said.

A woman described by officials as the child's godmother and former neighbor is jailed in San Augustine in East Texas. Krystle Tanner faces a kidnapping charge related to the child's disappearance in late 2004, when he was 8 months old.

State District Judge Mike Schneider, who ordered the DNA testing at an emergency custody hearing last week, is set to hold another hearing in the case next week.

Child welfare officials last week said Morin and Champion-Morin, both 29, were uncooperative with investigators when the boy initially was reported missing. The parents deny the allegations.

Another couple told Houston television station KHOU on Tuesday that they've been caring for the four other Morin children, who are between the ages of 7 and 14. They said Champion-Morin gave the children to them years ago and that they are the legal guardians.

Champion-Morin, emerging from a courtroom Wednesday, wouldn't discuss the TV station report.

"Right now, everything's a private matter," she said. "I'm not going there right now with any of the news."

Child Protective Services spokeswoman Gwen Carter said the situation involving the other children is part of the child welfare agency's investigation into the outcome of Miguel's custody.

"In regard to the other children, there's no current concern about their safety and well-being," Carter said. "But in the normal course of investigating, we talk to siblings to find out what may be going on."

See the rest here:
DNA confirms Houston man is missing child's father

HOUSTON -

A DNA test has proved with 99 percent certainty that the man claiming to be the father of a child kidnapped eight years ago is the biological father.

The test results were revealed in court on Wednesday.

Miguel Morin, 8, was kidnapped in November 2004. He was 8 months old when he disappeared.

Miguel was found earlier this month after a woman turned in her sister, Krystle Rochelle Tanner. Tanner has been charged with felony kidnapping.

Fernando Morin has been proven to be Miguel's father, it has not been determined who Miguel's mother is. Auboni Champion-Morin has submitted her DNA for testing and results were expected to be returned on Thursday.

Champion-Morin said she left her son with Tanner, a friend whom she considered the child's godmother. When she went to pick up Miguel the next day, both Tanner and the child were gone.

According to Children's Protective Services workers, Miguel was given a new name and a new birth date and, when shown a picture of Tanner, he identified her as his mother. Officials said he thinks he is 6 years old.

A psychologist said Miguel is frightened, shy and behind emotionally and psychologically. He does not attend school, officials said.

"The child doesn't really know what's going on," Morin said. "He's been lied to his whole life."

Link:
DNA test determines kidnapped baby's father

In the first of two recent papers*, Samuel Stavis, Elizabeth Strychalski and colleagues demonstrated that a nanoscale fluidic channel shaped like a staircase with many steps (developed previously at NIST and Cornell University) can be used to control the otherwise random drift of a DNA molecule through a fluid. Squeezed into the shallowest step at the top of the staircase, a strand of DNA diffuses randomly across that step. The DNA molecule seeks to increase its entropythe universal tendency towards disorder in a systemby relieving its confinement, and therefore, walks down onto the next deeper step when it reaches the edge. The motion of the molecule down the staircase, which the researchers termed entropophoresis (entropy-driven transport), ends when it becomes trapped on the deepest step at the bottom. Because this motion resembles that of a Slinky, the researchers nicknamed their system the nanoslinky. The researchers found that DNA molecules of different sizes and shapes descended the staircase at different rateswhich suggests the structure could be used to separate, concentrate and organize mixtures of nanoscale objects.

Stavis says that this novel technology provides advantages over traditional nanofluidic methods for manipulating and measuring DNA. Control over the behavior of a DNA molecule is built into the staircase structure. After placing the molecule on the top step [by driving the DNA strand up the staircase with an electric field], no external forces are needed to make it move, Stavis says. The staircase is a passive nanofluidic technology that automates complex manipulations and measurements of DNA.

This NIST advance in nanofluidic technology dovetails nicely with a NIST innovation in measurement sciencespecifically, determining the size of a DNA molecule in nanofluidic slitlike confinement imposed by the narrow gap between the floor of each step and the ceiling of the channel. In the nanoslinky system, Strychalski explains, the coiled and foldedDNAstrandcontracts progressively as it moves down the steps. Because there are many steps, we can make more detailed measurements than previous studies, she says.

Getting the most from those measurements was the goal of the research reported in the NIST teams second paper.** The challenge was to make our measurements of DNA size more quantitative, Strychalski says.

Previous measurements of DNA dimensions in nanofluidic systems, Strychalski says, have been limited by imaging errorsfrom the optical microscopes used to measure the dimensions of DNA molecules labeled with a fluorescent dye. The first problem is the diffraction limit, or the optical resolution, of the fluorescence microscope, she says. The second problem is the pixel resolution of the camera. Because a DNA molecule is not much larger than the wavelength of light and the effective pixel size, images of fluorescent DNA molecules are blurred and pixilated, and this increases the apparent size of the molecule.

To improve their measurements of DNA molecules during their descent, the NIST researchers used models to approximate the effects of diffraction and pixilation. Applying these numerical simulations to the images of DNA molecules confined by the staircase made the final measurements of DNA size the most quantitative to date. These measurements also showed that more work is needed to fully understand this complicated system.

According to Stavis and Strychalski, the staircase is a simple prototype of a new class of engineered nanofluidic structures with complex three-dimensional surfaces. With further refinements, the technology may someday be mass produced for measuring and manipulating not just DNA molecules, but other types of biopolymers and nanoscale materials for health care and nanomanufacturing.

More information: *S.M. Stavis, et al. DNA molecules descending a nanofluidic staircase by entropophoresis. Lab on a Chip (2012). DOI: 10.1039/c21c21152a

**E.A. Strychalski, et al. Quantitative measurements of the size scaling of linear and circular DNA in nanofluidic slitlike confinement. Macromolecules (2012). DOI: 10.1021/ma202559k

Provided by National Institute of Standards and Technology (news : web)

View post:
'Nanoslinky': A novel nanofluidic technology for DNA manipulation and measurement

Laboratory testing has shown that a Broward man locked up since he was 15 for the rape and murder of a Miramar woman in 1983 is not the source of the DNA found on the victim's body.

Anthony Caravella, now 41, has spent 25 years, or more than half his life, in prison.

"This means Anthony is innocent, it exonerates him," said Diane Cuddihy, the Broward chief assistant public defender who reopened Caravella's case and has been working on it since 2001.

McCann said she needs to know more about how the private forensic lab that did the testing came up with results so at odds with findings from the Broward Sheriff's Office crime lab eight years ago.

"This is a scientific inquiry at this point," the prosecutor said.

The test, performed by a private lab in Richmond, Calif., eliminated Caravella as a potential source for the sperm found inside the Miramar victim's body 26 years ago.

The test yielded the DNA profile of an unidentified male that could be checked against genetic databases to see if there's a match with anyone on file.

In 2001, the sheriff's crime lab reported that testing of the evidence produced nothing that would either implicate or exonerate Caravella. Further, the technicians said, there was no semen found.

Broward Sheriff's Office spokesman Jim Leljedal said Wednesday that the agency's crime technicians will ask Forensic Science Associates, the California lab, to share their methods and results "so we can take another look at this."

Miramar police, who investigated the 1983 murder with help from the Sheriff's Office, also will review the case in light of the new information, spokeswoman Tania Rues said.

See original here:
DNA test casts doubt on 1983 Miramar rape and murder case

DNA technologies are being aimed at the lowly stomach worm, the bane of sheep producers in high rainfall areas.

By the end of the year, a CSIRO teams aims to have a DNA-based test that will tell sheep producers the worm species they are dealing with, and the level of infestation, at 10 times the accuracy of current tests, with results delivered in a fraction of the time.

In time, CSIRO scientist Peter Hunt said, the test may be used for multiple functions - assessing liver fluke infestation, assessing drug resistance, assigning breeding values for worm resistance, and even for determining parentage and other breeding values that might otherwise be done in a separate test.

The pilot test to be made available at the end of 2012, through NSW Department of Primary Industry's Camden laboratories, is the culimination of about a decade's work by CSIRO and collaborating scientists.

Worm tests are conducted on faeces, a complex substance that is chock-full of DNA, including that of the animal that produced it.

Dr Hunt, who led the research, said considerable effort went into identifying sequences of DNA that provide a unique signature for each of the three species of interest - the black scour, barbers pole and small brown stomach worms.

An additional breakthrough arrived with the recent surge in molecular DNA technologies, which has allowed researchers to extract DNA from the faecal murk so that it can be assessed for the characteristic signature sequences of the parasites.

The technology will, at least initially, deliver much the same results as current worm egg count tests do, but with much greater accuracy, and a 48-hour turnaround time compared to the week currently needed.

But Dr Hunt said it is the additional possibilities that will make the technology revolutionary.

CSIRO scientist Jody McNally has been awarded a NSW DPI Young Scientists Science and Innovation award that will allow her to work on adding liver fluke to the DNA testing procedure.

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DNA targets stomach worm

20 March 2012 Last updated at 17:59 ET

Blood found at a Pembrokeshire woman's home partially matched the DNA profile of the man accused of her murder, Swansea Crown Court has heard.

John William Mason, 55, is accused of beating to death Angelika Dries-Jenkins, 66, at Narberth last year.

The prosecution claims the possibility of partial DNA matches from blood and fibres found by the inquiry coming from other people were one in a billion.

Mr Mason denies murder and the case continues.

The court has previously been told that Ms Dries-Jenkins was savagely beaten to death with a blunt instrument by Mr Mason because he needed the money to pay for his wedding.

He is said to have withdrawn 1,000 from her bank accounts, having stolen her handbag and her Skoda Fabia car, leaving her dead or dying.

On Tuesday, forensic scientist Martin Whittaker gave in detail the results of DNA testing at Ms Dries-Jenkins' house, her car and on a jumper which the prosecution says Mr Mason discarded in a bin in Haverfordwest.

Mr Whittaker said he found limited DNA profiles on a number of objects in the house but in Ms Dries-Jenkins' car he found a full profile which matched the defendant on the car keys.

He said he also found a DNA profile of Mr Mason on the neck of the jumper found in a bin, along with blood from Ms Dries-Jenkins.

Originally posted here:
DNA murder scene match, jury told

WASHINGTON - Twelve years ago, Congress passed a bill aimed at bolstering the capacity of state and local crime labs. It was known as the DNA Backlog Elimination Act. The ensuing effort now bears the more modest title of DNA Backlog Reduction Program. But even with the new name, it is an ambitious venture. Since 2006, Congress has poured $785 million into helping to fix the logjam in DNA evidence collection at the state and local level through this and other programs.

Theres no question that a serious problem exists. Recent advances in science and technology have made DNA a more useful tool for convicting the guilty and exonerating the innocent, but major backlogs persist, despite broad acknowledgement that delays in processing DNA evidence are keeping criminals on the streets.

"A lot of it is supply and demand," says Kermit Channel, director of the Arkansas state crime lab. "Because the technology offers so much more today than even five or six years ago, law enforcement is asking for more and more from us."

Federal help is making a difference. Between 2004 and 2010, the Backlog Reduction Program, run by the National Institute of Justice, has funded completion of 172,761 cases and significantly increased state and local DNA laboratory capacity. Channel credits federal funding with dramatically reducing the Arkansas backlog - which peaked at 18,000 in 2005 - to 4,200 now.

"Without those funding sources, we wouldnt be anywhere near where we are today," Channel says. Federal grants have allowed the state to invest in more sophisticated equipment that sorts through evidence faster, as well as nine additional staff members to process the evidence.

Still, while the crime lab is now able to stay up to date with homicides and sexual assaults, property crimes remain a major driver of the states persistent backlog. Processing evidence of property crimes is critical, Channel says, not just for solving those offenses, but also for investigating others that may have been committed by the same person.

This is because in addition to analyzing DNA evidence recovered from crime scenes, crime labs are tasked with maintaining databases that hold DNA profiles of certain convicted offenders. State and local DNA databases and the national DNA database, connected through the FBI-run system CODIS, have become important tools for solving crimes in cases for which there are no suspects. As of January 2012, CODIS had led to 171,800 "hits" or matches and assisted in more than 165,100 investigations, according to the FBI.

As the utility of DNA databases in solving crimes has become apparent, state policies have expanded to require that more and more DNA be collected and processed for inclusion in those databases. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is pushing a bill that would require DNA from any person convicted of any crime to be included in a database, and about half of the states now include DNA from arrestees who have not been convicted of crimes.

While inclusion of additional offenders and arrestees has made CODIS a more useful tool, it has also clogged crime labs and raised major concerns about privacy for individuals who have not been convicted, says Sara Katsanis, a researcher at Duke Universitys Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy. "The presumption is that if we had the whole population in there then it would work best," she says.

When states expand requirements to include more offenders and arrestees, Katsanis adds, they often fail to consider the impact on their existing crime lab capacity. "Theres not a lobbyist for the rape victims who arent getting their samples processed," she says.

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Crime labs struggle with DNA test demands

By CARA MATTHEWS Gannett Albany Bureau

ALBANY - Starting Oct. 12, anyone convicted of a felony or penal law misdemeanor will have to provide a sample for the state's DNA Databank.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed the measure into law Monday.

Currently, people found guilty of any felony and 36 misdemeanors - 48 percent of offenders in New York-- have to give a DNA sample for the databank.

The law makes New York the first state in the country with what's called an "all crimes" DNA database.

Cuomo proposed the expansion, which has been hailed by law-enforcement groups from around the state but criticized by civil libertarians.

The governor said Monday that DNA is a "state-of-the-art device, mechanism to find the truth." The bill he signed was seven years in the making, he said.

"Not to use it was actually a way of avoiding the truth. And we did that for many, many years," he said.

New York's DNA Databank has been used for more than 2,900 convictions, according to the governor's office. DNA samples have exonerated 27 people and helped clear many others early on in investigations. Tests cost about $30 each.

Cuomo said he is confident that state has the staff and system in place to handle the increase in volume as a result of the DNA Databank expansion.

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Cuomo Signs DNA Database Bill

The remains of three victims of Green River killer Gary Ridgway may finally yield their identities

New DNA technology and testing have allowed Bode Technology of Lorton, Va., to extract DNA profiles of the remains, two of which were recovered in Auburn and Burien in the early 1980s.

The third set of remains was found in Kent in 2003 where Kent-Kangley Road curves up the side of the Valley just above the Green River.

The remains in Auburn were recovered in 1985 near the Mountain View Cemetery; the Burien remains were found in 1984 in a Little League field.

Gary Ridgway of Auburn pleaded guilty in 2003 to the murders of 48 women, including four that were never identified. He's serving a life sentence at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla.

It was advances in DNA technology that led to his arrest in November 2001 outside the Kenworth Truck Co. plant in Renton, where he had worked for 30 years.

The three remains are among eight unidentified remains in the state the Virginia company was able to identify, under a National Institute of Justice grant. Seven of the eight are "full" profiles, while the eighth is a "strong" profile.

"These are remains that in some cases have gone to several prior labs without profiles being developed," said Sgt. Cindi West, a spokeswoman for the King County Sheriff's Office.

Dave Reichert, a Sheriff's Office detective who went on to become sheriff and then a U.S. congressman, led the investigation from its beginning three decades ago in 1982 on the banks of the Green River in Kent.

Now the profiles will go to the University of North Texas for review and uploading into the national DNA database. Investigators will attempt to match them against missing persons cases that have DNA profiles in the database.

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Advanced DNA technology may help identify three Green River Killer victims