Category Archives: DNA

MANILA The Philippine National Police crime laboratory on Tuesday reported the retrieval of 45 bodies from Marawi City, which will undergo DNA examinations.

Thirty-five of the bodies were retrieved by the PNP's Scene of Crime Operation (SOCO) teams and 10 by the Armed Forces of the Philippines.

Supt. Ramos Bergonio, PNP Crime Laboratory operations head, said his unit has begun processing the bodies and collecting antemortem data consisting of buccal swabs for DNA examination, as well as gathering personal information from immediate claimants of the bodies.

To date, Bergonio said there was no recorded match on DNA examination and the collected ante-mortem data.

For security reasons, Bergonio said the SOCO-Disaster Victim Identification could not conduct a full operation on the retrieved bodies yet since the unit is still waiting to be cleared by the AFP allowing it to freely go around Marawi.

For now, all 57 collected antemortem and postmortem data are preserved at the DNA lab inside Camp Crame.

Violence erupted in May after local Islamic State-inspired extremists laid siege in the southern Islamic city.

The clashes prompted President Rodrigo Duterte to place the entire Mindanao region under martial rule.

As of August 10, fighting in Marawi has killed 128 government fighters and 45 civilians. 552 enemies have also been killed.

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45 bodies recovered from Marawi up for DNA tests: PNP - ABS-CBN News

The Sun

How does DNA testing work, what are ancestry DNA kits and which celebrities have taken DNA tests? The Sun After taking a swab of your DNA, genetic scientists then examine it and see if there are any other potential matches in order to trace your ancestry. Ancestry DNA kits are now available to buy online, and only require you to take a small saliva sample ... DNA kit deal will reveal the mysteries of your Irish family historyIrishCentral all 3 news articles »

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How does DNA testing work, what are ancestry DNA kits and which celebrities have taken DNA tests? - The Sun

Jenny Dean, WTSP 5:27 AM. EDT August 14, 2017

Spoto High School history teacher Michael Mars is hoping to raise money to have his students do a DNA test to find out what parts of the world they're from. (Photo: WTSP)

As students start to hit the books, one of the hardest jobs for teachers is finding new ways to keep students engaged and interested in learning.

SpotoHigh School history teacher Michael Mars figured the best way to get students interested is to show them where they and their families fit into world events. He wants to have students do a simple DNA test to send off, to find out what parts of the world they come from.

Mars decided to do this after assigning a family tree project last year, and seeing how hard it was for many of his students.

"Our African American students would get to the late1800sand get to a dead end because of the whole issue with the civil war and slavery, Mars said. Other students would have no knowledge of their grandparents."

This idea costs money. To test all his students, it'll cost about $7,000.

Mars hopes to raise the money through a GoFundMe account.

If Mars doesn't get enough to test all the students, then he says he will use it as a reward for students who are excelling in his class.

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Spoto High History teacher raising money for DNA project - WTSP 10 News

A man pleaded guilty to the rape and beating of a woman on a Lancaster street in 2014, according to the Lancaster County District Attorney's office.

Robert R. Pitt, 20, recently pleaded guilty in Lancaster County Court to nine charges including felony counts of rape and robbery.

Pitt, a stranger to the victim, was a week short of turning 18 when he targeted the woman in the 400 block of South Duke Street on Aug. 10, 2014.

He took her cellphone as she tried to call for help, according to the district attorney's office. She broke free and was taken to an area hospital.

Pitt was a prison inmate last year when his DNA profile matched crime scene evidence.

Assistant District Attorney Karen Mansfield petitioned the case to be tried in adult court. The trial was scheduled to begin Monday, and Pitt entered the plea Aug. 11, according to the district attorney's office.

Judge Jeffery Wright accepted the plea and will order sentence in about 90 days, after a background check is completed.

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Man pleads guilty to Lancaster rape after crime scene DNA match - LancasterOnline

With each passing day, hackers are using innovative ways to breach cyber security systems. One such inventive method of hacking a computer is via DNA.

Researchers at the University of Washington claims to have successfully injected a malware program into a DNA sample and use it to hack into a computer that analyzes the sequence of that DNA. In other words, so that when a gene sequencer analyzes it the resulting data becomes a program that corrupts gene-sequencing software and takes control of the underlying computer.

The team also explained its work in a more readable essay on its website that provides suggestions to tighten computer security and privacy protections in DNA synthesis, sequencing, and processing.

One of the big things we try to do in the computer security community is to avoid a situation where we say, Oh shoot, adversaries are here and knocking on our door and were not prepared,' co-author Tadayoshi Kohno, a professor at UWs Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering, said in a statement. Instead, wed rather say, Hey, if you continue on your current trajectory, adversaries might show up in 10 years. So lets start a conversation now about how to improve your security before it becomes an issue.'

The researchers through trial and error successfully proved that it is possible to infect a computer with a malware that was coded into a strand of DNA and which when inserted into the gene-sequencing process, could allow an attacker to gain control of that system.

To assess whether this is theoretically possible, we included a known security vulnerability in a DNA processing program, they wrote. We then designed and created a synthetic DNA strand that contained malicious computer code encoded in the bases of the DNA strand. When this physical strand was sequenced and processed by the vulnerable program it gave remote control of the computer doing the processing. That is, we were able to remotely exploit and gain full control over a computer using adversarial synthetic DNA.

Should we be worried with this finding at this point of time? Well, not really. We dont want to alarm people or make patients worry about genetic testing, which can yield incredibly valuable information, said author and Allen School Associate Professor Luis Ceze. We do want to give people a heads up that as these molecular and electronic worlds get closer together, there are potential interactions that we havent really had to contemplate before.

However, the finding is been considered as a significant breakthrough in the growing overlap between the digital and the biological world. As sequencing becomes cheaper and more popular, there are chances of more DNA-encoded cyberthreats.

The researchers asserted that, It is time to improve the state of DNA security. We encourage the DNA sequencing community to proactively address computer security risks before any adversaries manifest.

The researchers plan to discuss their findings at the USENIX Security Symposium in Vancouver during a presentation on August 17.

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Researchers hack a computer using DNA - Techworm

Raymond was speechless. He glanced at his younger brother, then his eyes darted back to the entrance to the Dallas Fort Worth International Airport baggage claim.

The woman continued to walk slowly toward them -- then she froze.

"Elsie?" Anthony called out, his voice a tone higher. "Raymond?" she asked.

It was an emotional reunion between a mother and her sons that had been 46 years in the making. "I love you," she whispered, kissing both men on the cheek again and again.

As they hugged their mother, Abreu and Wiggs were surrounded by their children and girlfriends, members of the media, airport employees and curious travelers -- each perhaps trying to understand what they had just witnessed.

Many months of late-night calls -- and a DNA test -- had led to that life-changing moment. Now 64-year-old Elsie Ramirez was finally face-to-face with her sons, Raymond, 47, and Anthony, 46. She hadn't seen them since they were infants. Before the meeting, she had been anxious. "I feel the butterflies ... and felt like a new butterfly," she said as she hugged her sons.

Ramirez said she left Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, in the 1970's shortly after her relationship with her husband broke down. He was in the military and stationed at Ramey Air Force Base.

Soon after the couple's relationship soured, social services in Puerto Rico became involved and the brothers and their mother were split up. Raymond Abreu -- 10 months older than his brother -- moved in with his grandparents. Soon after that, his father took him to San Antonio, Texas.

Meanwhile, baby Anthony had been adopted by the Wiggs family. Marta Wiggs and her family called the boy "Mikey," a nod to his birth name.

She fondly recalls the morning in 1971 that her late husband called and told her about a little boy who had been dropped off at the base's social services office -- and who needed a home.

"I think my dad panicked," Anthony Wiggs told CNN. "He didn't know what to do with me and he took me to someone he knew, who happened to be his sergeant in his platoon, who (also worked) for social services."

Marta Wiggs already had an 8-month-old boy and said that at the time she felt that she had everything she needed to raise another baby. She immediately agreed to take on the child. "A couple of hours later, we had Mikey in the house too," she remembered, chuckling. "We were overjoyed." By 1973, the adoption was official and the Wiggs family moved to California.

Ramirez said she looked for her boys after she moved from Puerto Rico to Massachusetts and was devastated that she couldn't find them. She said the separation caused her years of pain.

Anthony, meanwhile, had become curious about his family history. His adoptive mother showed him his birth certificate. He searched the white pages each day and would make a few calls to Puerto Rico, New York and Florida. Eventually he connected with Raymond's ex-wife living in Texas who put the brothers in touch. Both believed their mother was dead. Everybody they knew to ask told them so. But still they weren't convinced.

"My brother found me first when I was 28 and he continued the mission to find mom," Raymond Abreu said. "He was just die hard, 'I'm going to find her.'"

In May this year they made a massive breakthrough. Anthony's girlfriend bought him a DNA test for his birthday. He was able to connect with a large database of historical records to find living relatives who shared the same DNA.

The test threw up a match for Wiggs' cousin, Elsie Ramirez' nephew, who he then tracked down. The man broke some stunning news -- Elsie was alive and living in Massachusetts. "I got on Facebook and just started typing her name," Anthony Wiggs said. "I ended up on a Facebook page with her best friend."

Wiggs got Elsie's cell phone number from her friend and left a voice message. His mother heard his voice on her phone just an hour later. "She was actually at the mall in the restroom," Wiggs said. "There was a lady in there next to her who heard her screaming and crying out of joy."

Still in shock, Elsie explained why she was so thrilled to the stranger and then stepped outside to call her son. Anthony had Raymond join the call. Abreu said his mother told them in Spanish "I always prayed, I always tried to look for you." Then all three cried together.

Four of her five Texas grandchildren were at the airport to greet Ramirez when she made her long-awaited arrival recently. They described the experience of being introduced to a new grandma as "surreal, exciting -- and nerve-racking."

Raymond and Anthony also have seven other half-brothers and sisters -- Elsie's other children. "My brother was like, you know what, let's just take it one step at a time," Abreu said. "Let's get mom here to Dallas. Let's concentrate on her. And next we will concentrate on our siblings. I think we made the right choice. It was too much to handle."

After being separated by almost 2,000 miles, they are excited about starting a relationship together, as a family. They spent their weekend hanging out at the pool, cooking, going out to dinner, and relaxing. Nobody could sleep, so they stayed up late chatting.

Elsie said she is eager to make up for missed moments and stay as close to her boys as possible. "It doesn't matter if we're older now, we're still her babies," Wiggs said as he smiled, receiving another kiss on the cheek from his mom.

Excerpt from:
DNA test leads brothers to reunite with mother -- after 46 years - CNN

Enlarge / This data could potentially contain malware.

With everyone from academics to Microsoft looking at the prospect of storing data using DNA, it was probably inevitable that someone would start looking at the security implications. Apparently, they're worse than most people might have expected. It turns out it's possible to encode computer malware in DNAand use it to attack vulnerabilities on the computer that analyzes the sequence of that DNA.

The researchers didn't find an actual vulnerability in DNA analysis softwareinstead, they specifically made a version of some software with an exploitable vulnerability to show that the risk is more than hypothetical. Still, an audit of some open source DNA analysis software shows that the academics who have been writing it haven't been paying much attention to security best practices.

DNA sequencing involves determining the precise order of the bases that make up a DNA strand. While the process that generates the sequence is generally some combination of biology and/or chemistry, once it's read, the sequence is typically stored as an ASCII string of As, Ts, Cs, and Gs. If handled improperly, that chunk of data could exploit vulnerable software to get it to execute arbitrary code. And DNA sequences tend to see a lot of software, which find overlapping sequences, align it to known genomes, look for key differences, and more.

To see whether this threat was more than hypothetical, the researchers started with a really simple exploit: store more data than a chunk of memory was intended to hold, and redirect program execution to the excess. In this case, said excess contained an exploit that would use a feature of the bash shell to connect into a remote server that the researchers controlled. If it worked, the server would then have full shell access to the machine running the DNA analysis software.

Actually implementing that in DNA, however, turned out to be challenging. DNA with Gs and Cs forms a stronger double-helix. Too many of them, and the strand won't open up easily for sequencing. Too few, and it'll pop open when you don't want it to. Repetitive DNA can form complex structures that get in the way of all the enzymes we normally use to manipulate DNA. The computer code they wanted to use, however, had lots of long runs of the same character, which made for a repetitive sequence that was very low in Gs and Cs. The company they were ordering DNA from couldn't even synthesize it.

In the end, they had to completely redesign their malware so that its translation into nucleic acids produced a DNA strand that could be synthesized and sequenced. The latter created another hurdle. The most common method of sequencing is currently limited to reading a few hundred bases at a time. Since each base has two bits of information, that means the malware has to be incredibly compact. That limits what can be done, and it explains why all this particular payload did was open up a remote connection.

Then, there was the matter of getting the malware executed. Since this was a proof of concept, the researchers made it easy on themselves: the modified an existing tool to create an exploitable vulnerability. They also made some changes to the system's configuration to make the execution of random memory locations easier (made the stack executable and turned off memory address randomization). While that makes the test environment less realistic, the goal was simply to demonstrate that DNA-delivered malware was possible.

With everything in place, they ordered some DNA online then sent it off to a facility for sequencing. When their sequences came back, they sent them through a software pipeline that included their vulnerable utility. Almost immediately, the computer running the software connected into their host, providing them with access to the machine. The malware worked.

Given how easy the authors made thingsa known vulnerability and a number of safeguards turned offdoes this really pose a threat? There's good news and bad news here.

On the good side, there's the complications of translating computer instructions into DNA that can be synthesized and sequenced. Plus there's the issue that most sequencing machines are limited in how long a sequence they can read. The machine used in this work maxes out at 300 bases, which is the equivalent of 600 bits, and most facilities keep things shorter than that. Longer read machines are available, but they're also error prone, and any errors will typically disable the malware.

But it's also common for the software used to analyze DNA to look for places where two short sequences overlap and use that to build up longer sequences. This has the potential to expand the size of the malware considerably, although less of the analysis software pipeline will be exposed to these longer, assembled sequences.

Similar issues exist with how the malware is encoded. While the authors used each base to encode two bits, DNA analysis software handles DNA in various ways internally. For example, if sequencing doesn't provide a clear indication of what a base is, other characters may be used (for example, N for any base, or R for G or A). Any software that handles these ambiguous bases has to have a more complex encoding scheme; many simply use ASCII characters.

As a result, different pieces of software will be vulnerable to different malware encodings. While that means some software will be immune, the size of the DNA analysis pipelines typically means that a dozen or more pieces of software will be run in succession. Chances are good that at least one of them will use the same encoding as the malware.

The research community's habits are also a major point of vulnerability. The analysis software was generally not written with security in mind. Using the Clang compiler's analysis tools and HP's Fortify compiler, the authors searched a collection of open source DNA analysis software for potential vulnerabilities. They found widespread use of functions that are prone to buffer overflows (strcat, strcpy, sprintf, vsprintf, gets, and scanf)about two instances for every 1,000 lines of code. "Our research suggests that DNA sequencing and analysis have not to date received significantif anyadversarial pressure," they conclude.

The second issue is how easy it is to infiltrate malicious code onto other machines via DNA. The sequencing machines have such a high capacity, work from several different labs is run on a single machine at the same time. As a result, some of the sequences returned from the machine will end up mixed into an unrelated sample. When the researchers checked with another group that had their sequencing performed at the same time, they found that the other group's results contained 27 instances of the malware.

Separately, lots of services simply allow you to send in any DNA for sequencing, putting their software at risk. And many public repositories allow people to upload their sequence for analysis by others. So, you wouldn't even have to synthesize any DNA to have your exploit analyzedyou can simply upload the text of the sequence you've designed to someone else's data repository.

None of this means that a DNA-based exploit is around the corner. But it's a healthy warning that the research community and commercial DNA companies should look to improve their practices before this does become a problem.

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Researchers encode malware in DNA, compromise DNA sequencing software - Ars Technica

An ultrasensitive DNA sensor that can detect S. pyogenes, a bacterium which causes a wide range of diseases in about 30 minutes has been developed. The DNA chip is highly specific device for S. pyogenes. The conventional method of identification takes 18-24 hours and the basic culture test does not specifically help distinguish S. pyogenes.

From mild skin and throat infections to life-threatening toxic shock syndrome, S. pyogenes infections affect 700 million people every year. If not treated during early stages of the infection, S. pyogenes can even lead to rheumatic heart disease (heart valves damage).

The sensor was developed by scientists from CSIR-Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (CSIR-IGIB) and National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) Delhi, and the results were published in the International Journal of Biological Macromolecules.

The DNA chip based sensor consists of a carbon electrode embedded with gold nanoparticles. By means of a bioinformatics study, the researchers were able to design probes which are specific for S. pyogenes.

The working electrode surface of the device is attached with several small-sized, single-stranded DNA probe specific to the pathogen. When patients DNA, isolated from throat swabs, are placed on the surface, they bind to the complementary single-stranded DNA on the device and an electrochemical change is seen. This is measured using a differential pulse voltammetry.

Identification of pathogen

For confirmation, traditional culture test was used and the results matched with the DNA sensor. The sensor is highly sensitive and could detect even 60-65 bacteria in a 6 microlitre sample. It could identify the pathogen even at very low concentrations of DNA. We were able to get a peak with a concentration of even 0.001nanogram per 6 microlitre, explains Swati Singh from IGIB and the first author of the paper.

The sensor was found to be stable for 12 months with only 10% loss in initial current peak on storage at 4 degree C. We are working on construction of different biosensors for different pathogens. Early and quick diagnosis can help in preventing the diseases and seek medical treatment at the early stage of infection, adds Dr. Ashok Kumar, Chief Scientist/Professor (AcSIR) at IGIB and corresponding author of the paper.

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Now, DNA sensor for quick pathogen detection - The Hindu

Technobabble is our look at the more colorful aspects of technology and the tech industry.Be sure to check out our most recent edition, which has microchips on the brain.

In the last few weeks humans became a part of the technological infrastructure with employee microchipping. Potential privacy concerns aside,employees of Three Square Market volunteered for the seemingly sci-fi microchipping.

While many of us would prefer to keep technical hardware outside our immediate biology, two DNA researchers decided to reverse that idea. In fact, they used DNA to infiltrate technology and their experiment proved successful.

This week, researchers from the University of Washington tested a self-inflicted malware attack within their DNA research lab, according to Wired. The team introduced malicious code into a sample of DNA that when tested by a gene sequencer, the resulting data became malware on the computer that received it.

In conducting their experiment, the researchers intentionally created a high-risk environment, susceptible to a "bioterrorist" attack. This included muting security programs and creating vulnerabilities in their software.

The attack is supposedly the first "DNA-based exploit of a computer system," according to MIT Technology Review.

While genetic specialists have shrugged off the effort, claiming the attack was destined to succeed because of the controlled environment, it is now evident that such an attack is possible. Hackers could become biohackers or something even more sinister.

Vulnerabilities in security and software systems are common on the cybersecurity landscape. In fact, most cyberattacks depend on them, as was the case with May's WannaCry attack. The only difference between the deliverance of a traditional cyberattack and a DNA attack,is their point of entry.

The University of Washington researchers are now arguing that biohackers could send faulty, manipulated or simply fake DNA samples with malicious encryptions to industries that study and store such data. These include college campuses, police forensics and genetic processing labs. The idea is that hackers, motivated by the plethora of personal data stored in these industries, could send maliciously coded DNA to be tested and thus infect computers and networks.

Previously, DNA scientists only had to worry about genetic miscalculations or those that could harm the human biology, not the safety of their computer software.

Traditional cyberattacks are estimated to cost the U.S. $121 billion per year. Companies are highly scrutinized and legally penalized when personal information is either leaked or exposed to malicious actors. Now that DNA could become the next phishing scam, it seems like threats within cybersecurity have expanded once again. When hacking evolves, so must cybersecurity.

Since a corrupt sample of saliva could potentially be the next ransomware or wiper, what developments will take place to test a genetic sampling before they reach a networked gene sequencer?

For the first time since its inception 16 years ago, an American has won Certiport's annual Microsoft Office Specialist World Championship in the Excel division, according to an announcement. John Dumoulin, a 17-year-old from Virginia, took home a $7,000 cash prize and serious bragging rights for his college applications.

Most of the other 560,000 worldwide student entries and 157 finalists ranging from ages 13 to 22 were not so fortunate in their efforts to prove their mastery of Microsofts Excel, Word and PowerPoint products.

Students were required to take a Microsoft Office Specialist certification exam, and finalists were selected at regional competitions. The project-based tests not only highlight the technical skills of youth worldwide, but also engage students with computer-based technology and develop competitive skills tailored to real-world applications.

With past and present victors hailing from every continent except Antarctica, the championship offers a small glimpse into the global presence of and dependence upon office technology.

It stands among the ranks of other prestigious international technology competitions such as the IEEE Student Branch Website Contest, the ACMInternational Collegiate Programming Contest and Microsoft's Imagine Cup.

Augmented and virtual reality is taking off, with leading companies investing heavily in enterprise and consumer technology. Now, AR is even finding a home in earnings calls.

That's right, Evan Spiegal, CEO of Snap Inc., declared SnapChat's dancing hot dog the "worlds first augmented reality superstar," BuzzFeed reports.

The hot dog was a hit, viewed 1.5 billion times on SnapChat since its debut. Snap's earnings, however, were not quite so hot. In its latest earnings report, Snap Inc. missed analysts' earnings expectations and its stock is down 16%.

The internet caught fire earlier this week when it was revealed the creator of current password policies has regrets. In 2003, Bill Burr wrote an 8-page document on password policies for the National Institute of Standards and Technology advising users to change passwords regularly, employing a mix of characters, numbers and capital letters, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Those password policies became law, triggering hair-pulling and vehement exclamations every 90 days when programs insisted users change passwords.

But Burr, now retired, said those 2003 policies don't actually stop hackers. After all, is there really much difference between PaSsWord1! and PaSsWord!1? Changes are too subtle, making passwords easy to guess. And, it just causes problems for users too.

This year, NIST has revamped its password policies and done away with some of the long-standing best practices for passwords. The new framework gets rid of arbitrary characters and frequent password resets, instead favoring long password phrases and password resets only if there is evidence of a compromised password.

Soon the most-common passwords could change from "123456" to "thequickbrownfoxjumpsoverthelazydog."

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Technobabble: Dancing hot dog is AR's first king and yes, DNA is hackable - CIO Dive

In what reads like science fiction becoming reality, researchers at the University of Washington have been able to successfully infect a computer with malware coded into a strand of DNA. In order to see if a computer could be compromised in that way, the team included a known security vulnerability in a DNA-processing program before creating a synthetic DNA strand with the malicious code embedded. A computer then analyzed the infected strand, and as a result of the malware in the DNA, the researchers were able to remotely exploit the computer. The results were published in a recent paper.

We wanted to understand what new computer security risks are possible in the interaction between biomolecular information and the computer systems that analyze it, the researchers wrote, led by Tadayoshi Kohno, a professor of computer science at the University of Washington.

The basic structural units of DNA are called nucleotides, and theyre stored as letters A, C, G, and T. Sequencing allows scientists to determine the order of the nucleotides, which in turn means scientists are able analyze the genetic information carried in the strands. The cost of sequencing has sharply fallen by over 100,000 times in the last 10 years.

After sequencing, this DNA data is processed and analyzed using many computer programs. Modern technology means hundreds of millions of DNA strands can be processed at the same time. Though taking over computers using DNA seems like something out of the movies, creepily played out in real life, the researchers say theres no reason for concern. We have no evidence to believe that the security of DNA sequencing or DNA data in general is currently under attack. Instead, we view these results as a first step toward thinking about computer security in the DNA sequencing ecosystem, the scientists said.

A primary goal of this study was to better understand the feasibility of DNA-based code injection attacks. We also know of no efforts by adversaries to compromise computational biology programs, they explain.

Just last month, scientists revealed they were able to insert a GIF of a horse into the DNA of living bacteria.

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Scientists successfully infiltrate computer using malware coded into DNA - The Verge