Category Archives: DNA

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - The Columbus Zoo and Aquarium polar bear cubs arent just cute and cuddly.

Theyre also helping the federal government fight crimes against their wild relatives in the Arctic, thanks to advancements in forensic science and DNA testing.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services Forensic Laboratory in Oregon often relies on zoos to maintain its database of DNA samples from protected animal species. But when the Columbus Zoo sent DNA from its six polar bears to the lab in March, it came with payoffs for both parties - including a confirmation of whether the zoos three newest cubs are male or female.

The labs scientists analyze evidence during investigations of violations of federal wildlife protection laws, including poaching, illegal trading of animals, theft of rare plants and creating products from endangered species.

For example, the lab could use DNA to identify a decaying carcass as a protected animal or confirm that a business is selling items made with bald eagle feathers or elephant ivory.

Scientists are trying to perfect a new, more accurate DNA test for bears and benefited from the Columbus Zoos controlled samples from a known family of animals. The reference data illustrate how genetic patterns change in a population over time. It could someday pin down criminals who harm polar bears, which are protected by the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act, on which the bears are listed as threatened.

Only an estimated 20,000 to 25,000 polar bears are living in the wild, and there are just 40 or so bears in 27 U.S. zoos that are members of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums.

Our polar bear database is fairly small, so the more samples we can get, the better, senior forensic scientist Mary Burnham Curtis said.

The zoo, meanwhile, was seeking a non-invasive way to determine the sexes of its baby bears. Because the 6-month-old animals are being raised by their mothers and not hand-reared by zookeepers, staffers would have had to put them under anesthesia to examine their genitals and make an official determination.

That seemed like an unnecessary risk for something that was just curiosity, not critical, said Randy Junge, the zoos vice president of animal health.

Luckily, we were able to help each other out.

Junge sent emails to diagnostic labs across the country seeking options, including the Fish and Wildlife forensic lab. Zoos work with the lab frequently to provide DNA samples to use as reference data - the Columbus Zoo has provided samples of rhinoceros horn in the past, for example - and some zoos serve as holding facilities for living animals that are considered evidence in ongoing criminal investigations.

Although the lab doesnt perform sex determination tests as a service to the public, its scientists are usually willing to work with zoos that provide DNA samples, Curtis said.

Columbus Zoo staff provided hair clippings and saliva swabs from all six of its bears.

Ultimately, test results confirmed what keepers suspected based on their observations: mother bear Ananas cub is female and mother bear Auroras twin cubs are male and female.

Ananas cub was recently named Amelia Gray in an online naming contest. The twins were named Nuniq and Neva by zoo staff. Nuniq is a derivative of Nanuq, the name of all three cubs father, who died in late April from liver cancer at age 29.

___

Online: http://bit.ly/2qXhiiR

Read the original here:
DNA from zoo's polar bears used in fight against poaching - Washington Times

Over the years, DNA has become one of forensic science's most powerful tools. Over the years, DNA has become one of forensic science's most powerful tools. Related Content

(CNN) - This summer marks 30 years since one of the biggest advances in criminal investigations, DNA profiling, identified a killer.

Every cell within every living creature contains DNA material. That material carries instructions that dictate everything from how tall you'll be to what diseases you may develop, and it's unique to you. Forensic scientists can find it in biological material left on a crime scene or body, like hair, saliva or even skin tissue.

Through DNA profiling, also known as DNA fingerprinting, scientists analyze that material and create a chart on which variations show up at different locations. These are visualized as peaks and are translated into numbers that can be matched with the DNA of other suspects or with material from missing people.

Over the years, DNA has become one of forensic science's most powerful tools, helping to identify suspects and victims, convict the guilty and exonerate the innocent. DNA science and technology have grown so advanced that a mere touch can link someone to a crime scene.

"When I told people in 1977 in high school that I wanted to be a forensic scientist, they literally thought I was talking about voodoo and witchcraft," said Jenifer Smith, director of the District of Columbia's Department of Forensic Sciences and a former FBI special agent. "What DNA did in the late '80s and early '90s was sort of bring a more objective science ... cool technology, molecular biology. It gave almost this credence to forensics, because now, it looks more like a science."

Dwight E. Adams was the first FBI official to testify on DNA evidence in the United States and helped oversee the FBI's establishment of DNA profiling rules and guidelines for labs across the country. He called DNA "the single greatest advance in forensic science."

"The technology has improved tremendously since 1988 when it would take us 6 weeks to perform one test," Adams wrote in an email. "Now, laboratories are performing the test in about 24 hours and able to work with samples that we could only dream about in the early days."

Still, forensic science and DNA profiling aren't foolproof.

During his years in the White House, President Obama implemented several initiatives to improve forensic evidence gathering. In a 2017 Harvard Law Review article, he said they were sparked by lingering concerns from a 2009 National Academy of Sciences report, along with a rash of "high-profile exonerations of wrongfully convicted individuals that indicated that testimony exceeded the scientific capabilities of the technique."

"Contrary to the perception of TV dramas, forensic science disciplines are subject to varying degrees of uncertainty and misinterpretation," Obama wrote.

Forensic evidence pinning a suspect to the scene of a crime can be powerful in the courtroom. But scientists agree that when investigators testify about that evidence, they haven't always emphasized to the jury that science can make mistakes, such as DNA contamination in labs or DNA transferred from one crime scene to another.

One of Obama's initiatives launched a review of FBI testimony in cases. Another brought together scientists, law enforcement officials, judges and lawyers to create the National Commission on Forensic Science. Both of these initiatives were ended in April by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who said the Trump administration would seek its own path toward improving criminal investigations under a new task force.

Some investigators said that over the years, funding has not kept up with the demand for evidence analysis, and labs are overwhelmed.

"Forensic science has been dealing with a resource problem," said former investigator John M. Collins Jr., whose Forensic Foundations Group works to educate lab technicians.

Indeed, crime labs around the country now process over 3 million requests per year, one-quarter of which is DNA profiling, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Here are a few notable cases in which DNA evidence made a mark.

In 1986, authorities in Leicester, England, were investigating the rapes and murders of two young women. A suspect confessed to the crime involving one woman but not the other. Convinced the two crimes were linked, investigators sought the help of Dr. Alec Jeffreys, a geneticist who developed techniques to visualize bands of DNA in his lab.

With Jeffreys' help, authorities analyzed the DNA of hundreds of men living near the crime but found no match. But the analysis also cleared the man who had confessed. In 1987, authorities found that local baker Colin Pitchfork had avoided taking the test. His sample was a match for both killings, and under pressure from DNA evidence, he confessed to the crimes.

In 1989, Gary Dotson became the first person exonerated because of DNA testing. He'd been behind bars for over a decade after a woman accused him of rape in 1977.

Investigators used blood-type and hair analysis to convict him, but he appealed for years, until DNA testing could be applied to material still held from the case. DNA cleared him, and he won his release. Testing linked the evidence to the accuser's then-boyfriend, and the woman admitted she'd made up the rape.

DNA science was slowly becoming more precise. And a few years after Dotson's release, in 1994, the FBI expanded its Combined DNA Indexing System, known as CODIS, which allows law enforcement officials and crime labs to share and search through thousands of DNA profiles. It also sets guidelines for collection and analysis of DNA. It's helped in more than 350,000 investigations.

In the 1995 trial of star athlete O.J. Simpson, a huge television audience followed along as the defense picked apart forensic evidence gathered by the state, particularly a bloody sock, knife and glove. The defense team raised questions about whether the DNA could have been contaminated.

Ultimately, those questions made a difference: Simpson was acquitted in the June 1994 killings of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman.

The case helped civilians understand that DNA and forensic science could be flawed. Marcia Clark, the prosecutor in the case, has said police mishandling of the evidence and shoddy forensic collections created a distrust of the Los Angeles Police Department.

Simpson is imprisoned in Nevada in a separate case and is up for parole this year.

Early on, scientists needed significant amounts of DNA in order to analyze it, which prevented its use in many cases. But that changed over time.

Starting in 1982, authorities in Seattle searched fruitlessly as a serial rapist and murderer killed dozens of women and buried their bodies along the Green River in Washington state. Many were prostitutes 16 to 36 years old.

The case went cold, but in 2001, authorities were able to review old evidence using a technology called PCR, or polymerase chain reaction. PCR takes tiny amounts of DNA, previously nearly impossible to analyze, and copies it over and over. Authorities matched DNA from the victims' bodies to one of their prime suspects, Gary Ridgway.

Under pressure from DNA and other forensic evidence, Ridgway confessed to 48 counts of murder. (The story is being retold by HLN's "Beyond Reasonable Doubt.")

After the 2007 killing of 21-year-old British student Meredith Kercher in Italy, American Amanda Knox and her boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were convicted of murder in 2009. But there was an outcry from scientists and investigators in the United States. They were suspicious of DNA collection throughout the crime scene and questioned, among other things, the finding of Sollecito's DNA on a small part of Kercher's bra.

After years of legal back and forth, Knox's and Sollecito's murder convictions were overturned in 2015. Another man, Rudy Guede, was convicted in Kercher's death and remains in prison.

As DNA technology became more sensitive, its uses expanded and demand grew -- but the tests can't always keep up.

"What happened in the Amanda Knox trial, in that investigation, is symptomatic of another issue, and that is that both the public and prosecutors have been pressuring ... and I suppose defense attorneys, the whole system ... is pressuring labs into pushing the envelope of what these tests can do," said Dan E. Krane, a biology professor at Wright State University who's reviewed cases for defense teams for decades, including the Knox case. "The crux there, the central issue, is ambiguity."

Forensic analysts give a statistical analysis of whether DNA can pinpoint the suspect in the case, but Krane and many others argue that analysts could go further to explain the possibility of error to the jury. DNA's presence on a scene, Krane said, does not indicate when or how it got there.

There's work to do on educating jurors and the public about DNA's limitations, but, Krane said, it remains "the gold standard of forensic science. It doesn't mean that there isn't room to improve that gold standard, but all the rest of forensic science, and I mean everything -- fingerprint, hair and fiber, handwriting, blood spatter, gunshot residue, you name it -- everything else needs to aspire to have that same sort of scientific rigor that is now in play for DNA profiling."

See the article here:
The shifting science of DNA in the courtroom - WFMZ Allentown

Tony Dejak/Associated Press

The Cleveland Cavaliers are the defending champions and weren't ready to give away their crown just yet with a 137-116 victory over the Golden State Warriors in Friday's Game 4 of the NBA Finals.

LeBron James led the way with a triple-double of 31 points, 11 assists and 10 rebounds, and said his Cavaliers have championship in their DNA:

Spearheaded by that championship pride, Cleveland didn't back down from the mighty Warriors despite a 3-0 hole.

James exchanged words with Kevin Durant and drew a technical foul, Cleveland's offense dictated the pace from the early going with an astounding 49 points in the first quarter and 86 by halftime, and the team as a whole drilled 24 three-pointers.

Kyrie Irving was also brilliant with 40 points as he sliced through the Warriors defense and connected on seven triples.

Despite Friday's win, the championship DNA will need to be on full display for the Cavaliers to have a chance to shock the world and overcome a 3-1 deficit.

The series shifts back to Oracle Arena for Monday's Game 5, and Golden State is yet to lose at home this postseason. It is easy to point to last year's Finals and say Cleveland won Games 5 and 7 on the Warriors' court while overcoming the 3-1 hole, but Durant's presence, a fully healthy Stephen Curry and a non-suspended Draymond Green make this year a more daunting challenge for the champs.

James will need to be unstoppable the rest of the way, and his teammates will have to dip into that championship DNA to have a chance at battling back.

See the article here:
LeBron James Says Cavaliers Have Championship DNA Too After Game 4 Win - Bleacher Report

Over the years, DNA has become one of forensic science's most powerful tools. Over the years, DNA has become one of forensic science's most powerful tools. Related Content

(CNN) - This summer marks 30 years since one of the biggest advances in criminal investigations, DNA profiling, identified a killer.

Every cell within every living creature contains DNA material. That material carries instructions that dictate everything from how tall you'll be to what diseases you may develop, and it's unique to you. Forensic scientists can find it in biological material left on a crime scene or body, like hair, saliva or even skin tissue.

Through DNA profiling, also known as DNA fingerprinting, scientists analyze that material and create a chart on which variations show up at different locations. These are visualized as peaks and are translated into numbers that can be matched with the DNA of other suspects or with material from missing people.

Over the years, DNA has become one of forensic science's most powerful tools, helping to identify suspects and victims, convict the guilty and exonerate the innocent. DNA science and technology have grown so advanced that a mere touch can link someone to a crime scene.

"When I told people in 1977 in high school that I wanted to be a forensic scientist, they literally thought I was talking about voodoo and witchcraft," said Jenifer Smith, director of the District of Columbia's Department of Forensic Sciences and a former FBI special agent. "What DNA did in the late '80s and early '90s was sort of bring a more objective science ... cool technology, molecular biology. It gave almost this credence to forensics, because now, it looks more like a science."

Dwight E. Adams was the first FBI official to testify on DNA evidence in the United States and helped oversee the FBI's establishment of DNA profiling rules and guidelines for labs across the country. He called DNA "the single greatest advance in forensic science."

"The technology has improved tremendously since 1988 when it would take us 6 weeks to perform one test," Adams wrote in an email. "Now, laboratories are performing the test in about 24 hours and able to work with samples that we could only dream about in the early days."

Still, forensic science and DNA profiling aren't foolproof.

During his years in the White House, President Obama implemented several initiatives to improve forensic evidence gathering. In a 2017 Harvard Law Review article, he said they were sparked by lingering concerns from a 2009 National Academy of Sciences report, along with a rash of "high-profile exonerations of wrongfully convicted individuals that indicated that testimony exceeded the scientific capabilities of the technique."

"Contrary to the perception of TV dramas, forensic science disciplines are subject to varying degrees of uncertainty and misinterpretation," Obama wrote.

Forensic evidence pinning a suspect to the scene of a crime can be powerful in the courtroom. But scientists agree that when investigators testify about that evidence, they haven't always emphasized to the jury that science can make mistakes, such as DNA contamination in labs or DNA transferred from one crime scene to another.

One of Obama's initiatives launched a review of FBI testimony in cases. Another brought together scientists, law enforcement officials, judges and lawyers to create the National Commission on Forensic Science. Both of these initiatives were ended in April by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who said the Trump administration would seek its own path toward improving criminal investigations under a new task force.

Some investigators said that over the years, funding has not kept up with the demand for evidence analysis, and labs are overwhelmed.

"Forensic science has been dealing with a resource problem," said former investigator John M. Collins Jr., whose Forensic Foundations Group works to educate lab technicians.

Indeed, crime labs around the country now process over 3 million requests per year, one-quarter of which is DNA profiling, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Here are a few notable cases in which DNA evidence made a mark.

In 1986, authorities in Leicester, England, were investigating the rapes and murders of two young women. A suspect confessed to the crime involving one woman but not the other. Convinced the two crimes were linked, investigators sought the help of Dr. Alec Jeffreys, a geneticist who developed techniques to visualize bands of DNA in his lab.

With Jeffreys' help, authorities analyzed the DNA of hundreds of men living near the crime but found no match. But the analysis also cleared the man who had confessed. In 1987, authorities found that local baker Colin Pitchfork had avoided taking the test. His sample was a match for both killings, and under pressure from DNA evidence, he confessed to the crimes.

In 1989, Gary Dotson became the first person exonerated because of DNA testing. He'd been behind bars for over a decade after a woman accused him of rape in 1977.

Investigators used blood-type and hair analysis to convict him, but he appealed for years, until DNA testing could be applied to material still held from the case. DNA cleared him, and he won his release. Testing linked the evidence to the accuser's then-boyfriend, and the woman admitted she'd made up the rape.

DNA science was slowly becoming more precise. And a few years after Dotson's release, in 1994, the FBI expanded its Combined DNA Indexing System, known as CODIS, which allows law enforcement officials and crime labs to share and search through thousands of DNA profiles. It also sets guidelines for collection and analysis of DNA. It's helped in more than 350,000 investigations.

In the 1995 trial of star athlete O.J. Simpson, a huge television audience followed along as the defense picked apart forensic evidence gathered by the state, particularly a bloody sock, knife and glove. The defense team raised questions about whether the DNA could have been contaminated.

Ultimately, those questions made a difference: Simpson was acquitted in the June 1994 killings of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman.

The case helped civilians understand that DNA and forensic science could be flawed. Marcia Clark, the prosecutor in the case, has said police mishandling of the evidence and shoddy forensic collections created a distrust of the Los Angeles Police Department.

Simpson is imprisoned in Nevada in a separate case and is up for parole this year.

Early on, scientists needed significant amounts of DNA in order to analyze it, which prevented its use in many cases. But that changed over time.

Starting in 1982, authorities in Seattle searched fruitlessly as a serial rapist and murderer killed dozens of women and buried their bodies along the Green River in Washington state. Many were prostitutes 16 to 36 years old.

The case went cold, but in 2001, authorities were able to review old evidence using a technology called PCR, or polymerase chain reaction. PCR takes tiny amounts of DNA, previously nearly impossible to analyze, and copies it over and over. Authorities matched DNA from the victims' bodies to one of their prime suspects, Gary Ridgway.

Under pressure from DNA and other forensic evidence, Ridgway confessed to 48 counts of murder. (The story is being retold by HLN's "Beyond Reasonable Doubt.")

After the 2007 killing of 21-year-old British student Meredith Kercher in Italy, American Amanda Knox and her boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were convicted of murder in 2009. But there was an outcry from scientists and investigators in the United States. They were suspicious of DNA collection throughout the crime scene and questioned, among other things, the finding of Sollecito's DNA on a small part of Kercher's bra.

After years of legal back and forth, Knox's and Sollecito's murder convictions were overturned in 2015. Another man, Rudy Guede, was convicted in Kercher's death and remains in prison.

As DNA technology became more sensitive, its uses expanded and demand grew -- but the tests can't always keep up.

"What happened in the Amanda Knox trial, in that investigation, is symptomatic of another issue, and that is that both the public and prosecutors have been pressuring ... and I suppose defense attorneys, the whole system ... is pressuring labs into pushing the envelope of what these tests can do," said Dan E. Krane, a biology professor at Wright State University who's reviewed cases for defense teams for decades, including the Knox case. "The crux there, the central issue, is ambiguity."

Forensic analysts give a statistical analysis of whether DNA can pinpoint the suspect in the case, but Krane and many others argue that analysts could go further to explain the possibility of error to the jury. DNA's presence on a scene, Krane said, does not indicate when or how it got there.

There's work to do on educating jurors and the public about DNA's limitations, but, Krane said, it remains "the gold standard of forensic science. It doesn't mean that there isn't room to improve that gold standard, but all the rest of forensic science, and I mean everything -- fingerprint, hair and fiber, handwriting, blood spatter, gunshot residue, you name it -- everything else needs to aspire to have that same sort of scientific rigor that is now in play for DNA profiling."

More:
The shifting science of DNA in the courtroom - MyArkLaMiss (press release) (blog)

Mutations that prevent cells from spell-checking their DNA may make cancer cells vulnerable to immunotherapies, a new study suggests.

A type of immune therapy known as PD-1 blockade controlled cancer in 77 percent of patients with defects in DNA mismatch repair the system cells use to spell-check and fix errors in DNA (SN Online: 10/7/15). The therapy was effective against 12 different types of solid tumors, including colorectal, gastroesophageal and pancreatic cancers, and even tumors of unknown origin, researchers report June 8 in Science.

Where the tumor started doesnt matter. What matters is why the tumor started, says study coauthor Richard Goldberg, an oncologist at West Virginia University Cancer Institute in Morgantown.

People with defective DNA spell-checkers accumulate many mutations in their cells, which can lead to cancer. While mismatch repair errors can spark cancer, they may also be its Achilles heel: Some misspellings cause the cancer cells to make unusual proteins that the immune system uses to target tumors for destruction.

Even before treatment, cancer patients in the study had a small number of infection- and tumor-fighting T cells that target these unusual proteins, the researchers found. Treating patients with an antibody called pembrolizumab (sold under the brand name Keytruda) caused these T cells to increase in number, says coauthor Kellie Smith, a cancer immunologist at Johns Hopkins University.

The antibody binds to a protein on the surface of T cells called the PD-1 receptor. Some tumor cells use this receptor to hide from the immune system (SN: 4/1/17, p. 24). Blocking the receptor with the antibody unmasks the tumors. As a result, immune cells can go to all corners of the body and eradicate tumors, Smith says. That includes going after notoriously deadly metastatic tumors ones that have spread from other parts of the body. Once the T cells are primed for action, they may patrol the body for a long time, stopping cancer from taking hold again, Smith says.

All 86 patients in the study had metastatic cancers that had not responded well to other treatments. For 18 patients, the antibody treatment appears to be a complete cure. Their tumors disappeared entirely. After two years of treatment, 11 of those patients were taken off the antibody. Their tumors have not returned even after a median of 8.3 months.

Other patients had tumors that shrank but didnt disappear, or that remained stable while on and even after treatment. Goldberg says scans suggest some of the patients still have tumors, but biopsies show no remaining cancer cells. The tumors are really clusters of immune cells that have invaded sites to kill cancer, he says.

Not everyone fared so well. Tumors in five patients initially shrank, but then began to grow again. DNA from three of those people showed that two had developed mutations in the beta 2-microglobulin gene, which helps immune cells track down their targets.

Side effects of the treatment included skin rashes, thyroid problems and diabetes as the therapy caused the immune system to attack other parts of the body.

Revving up the immune system to combat a wide variety of tumor types may take cancer therapy in a new direction, says Khaled Barakat, a computational scientist at the University of Alberta in Canada, who was not involved in the study. In recent years, scientists have devised drugs to target specific mutations in one type of cancer. Thats old school, Barakat says. Immunotherapy is the future.

On May 23, the Food and Drug Administration approved pembrolizumab for advance-stage cancer patients with mismatch repair mutations for whom other drugs have failed. In the United States, about 60,000 late-stage cancer patients each year could be eligible for the immune therapy, the researchers estimate.

Follow this link:
Therapy flags DNA typos to rev cancer-fighting T cells - Science News Magazine

Its taken over twenty years of trying, but finally scientists have been able to sequence the DNA of an ancient Egyptian mummyand the results are surprising. Stephen Schiffels, head of the Max Planck Institutes Population Genetics Group, and his team have published the unprecedented findings in the May 30 Nature Communications Journal, reports Live Science. It turns out, ancient Egyptians had more in common genetically to people from todays Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan and Iraq.

Researchers were generally skeptical about DNA preservation in Egyptian mummies, Schiffels told Live Science. Due to the hot climate, the high humidity levels in tombs and some of the chemicals used during mummification, which are all factors that make it hard for DNA to survive for such a long time.

The first attempt at sequencing DNA from a mummy was in 1985, according to Live Science. However, the results were discarded when it was discovered that the samples had been contaminated with modern DNA. Then, in 2010, scientists tried to test DNA from samples taken from mummies with familial ties to King Tutankhamun, but the published results were met with criticism as the techniques used at the time werent able to distinguish between ancient and newer DNA samples.

This time around, Schiffels, geneticist Johannes Krause, and their team, used next-generation sequencing, which is able to isolate older and newer sample sets. The group utilized samples from 151 mummies from settlement near Cairo called Abusir el-Meleq, all buried between 1380 B.C. and 425 A.D.

The team compared the samples from the mummies with DNA (both ancient and modern) from people living between Egypt and Ethiopia. The results: DNA sequences over the span of 1,300 years didnt change much, despite the fact that Egypts population was influence by both Roman and Greek invasions, according to findings. However, when the same set was compared to the DNA of modern Egyptians, a stark difference was the absence of sub-Saharan ancestry, which is prevalent in todays population.

The shift in genealogy over millennia could be due to increased mobility down the Nile and increased long-distance commerce between sub-Saharan Africa and Egypt, Schiffels said. The scientists at theMax Planck Institute plan to do further testing from mummies found across the country.

Excerpt from:
DNA Testing on Mummies Reveals Surprise Ancestry for Ancient Egyptians - Observer

Read the full text from LeBron James' post-game press conference:

Q. Just wondering if you could take us through kind of what was going through your head and how the play developed, the one where you went off the glass yourself. LEBRON JAMES: I think I was -- it was a transition play, and I believe it was Kyle on my right side that was running the wing, and two of their players were back and I was just trying to engage one of them so I could get Kyle a shot in the corner, and they both went to Kyle, I believe, and I got caught in the air. So that's the only thing I could think of. I didn't want to travel, and Draymond was kind of playing Double T, and Double T kind of had his back towards me, so I just threw it off the glass and went and got it.

Q. The way you guys came out in that first quarter where Tristan is establishing the tone of the game, JR Smith is hitting some big threes, how can you ensure that you bring that same kind of mentality on the road in Oracle and just seeing what you guys were capable of, doing that? LEBRON JAMES: Well, we're going to watch the film when we get to Golden State, and let's see ways we can be better. We didn't play our type of game in Game 1 and Game 2. And if we don't do that, if we play like we played in Game 1 and Game 2 of this series, the series is over. So we have to continue to play how we played at home. We have to be physically -- be physical at the point of attack, we got to continue to move the ball, share the ball. And tonight we had 27 assists, and that's very key.

Q. The first three games you guys kind of struggled from beyond the arc, hit 24 tonight. Just how different of a team are you guys when you're just knocking those perimeter shots down? LEBRON JAMES: That's part of who we are. We set a lot of records since we kind of assembled this team the last couple years. And that's just part of who we are. We got guys that can stretch the floor, make big shots, and they did it tonight, from Ky, Kevin, and Swish, and everybody else chipped in as well.

Q. Did you talk with your teammates before the game and just stress like we're not going out like that, something along those lines?

LEBRON JAMES: Well, I didn't hear it, but some of the other guys heard it and told me that that they wanted to celebrate on our floor once again and they wanted to spray champagne in our locker rooms, and I think it came from Draymond, which is okay, that's Dray anyway.

But so I just told guys, I didn't stress anything besides just live in the moment. Live in the moment. We have a great opportunity to give ourself another opportunity to keep going. We played well in Game 3, well enough to win, and we just didn't do it. But tonight we came out and we stuck to the game plan our coaching staff put together and we -- this was as close to a 48-minute game we played in the post-season. Even in the first couple first three rounds, this was close as -- to a 48- minute game as we played. It was big for us.

Q. How important is that, that everybody standing out for the game, and also do you finally feel that tonight you guys are who you are? LEBRON JAMES: Well, I think the last two games we have played Cavaliers basketball. We have been physical, we haven't turned the ball over, and we have shared the ball. In Game 3 we just -- down the stretch we couldn't make any shots, and they did. And that was just -- it's a make-or-miss league at that point.

So in the last couple games we have been playing Cavaliers basketball, and it's resulted in us just playing better and us getting this win tonight.

Q. Kind of looks like dj vu all over again, you guys going back west down 3-1. Do you have these guys just where you want them? LEBRON JAMES: No, they got us where they want us. Listen, at the end of the day, we want to just try to put ourself in position to play another game, and we did that tonight and hopefully we can do it Monday night where we can come back here.

So our mindset is try to go up there and get one. Which is probably one of the toughest environments we have in this league, along with our building. And so we look forward to the challenge and the matchup.

Q. 40 more tonight for Kyrie, LeBron, coming off of the difficult end to Game 3, big performance from him, did you feel that he was going to be able to bounce back in a big way after that tough end to Game 3, and what else did you see from him tonight? LEBRON JAMES: He's just been very special in closeout games. On both sides. Us being able to close out a team trying to close out on us. He's just been built for that moment. I said that over and over again, that he's always been built for the biggest moments, and tonight he showed that once again. It's not surprising. He's just that special.

Q. Whether it's adversity or desperation or intensity, this group, as we have seen it the last couple of years, seems to always respond to it. What is in your guys' makeup that allows you to only have that really come out in these situations? LEBRON JAMES: I don't know. I don't like it.

(Laughter.)

It causes too much stress, man. I'm stressed out. Keep doing this every year. But listen, at the end of the day we just got some resilient guys. The Warriors have championship DNA, and we do as well. We're battle tested, they're battle tested. And getting swept is something that you never want to have happen. Especially this point. You get all the way to the Finals, you hate to get swept, lose two games on your home floor. So I think a lot of guys had that in their mind today, and they came out and played like it.

Q. Physically, are you okay? We saw you getting some treatment after the game. LEBRON JAMES: I'll be all right on Monday. I'll be all right on Monday.

Q. Couple of years back, obviously, Andy was kind of that spark plug energy-wise. How different is it now when Tristan can play the game that he was able to play tonight versus last three games, from just a collective team-wide energy standpoint? LEBRON JAMES: He's a big piece of our puzzle. We all know that. He's been huge for our success the last three years, and they did a -- they have done a great job of putting him in the game plan and neutralizing what he does best, and that's offensive rebound and giving us extra possessions. And it's been very tough on him in this Finals so far. But he didn't get down on himself. He came through when we needed him the most, and that was tonight, getting 10 rebounds and also dishing out five assists. So that was big time.

Q. He's a professional, but you've referred to him before as your little brother. Have you had any talks with him over the last three games after any sort of frustration or struggles in regard to being ready for Game 4? LEBRON JAMES: Yeah, I have. I'm not here to tell you guys what I've been talking to him about or what I -- but he knows what I expect out of him. Like I said, tonight we needed him the most, and he was there.

Q. After Game 3 being such a letdown, did you have to work into believing that something like tonight was possible? And if you did, when did you get to that point? LEBRON JAMES: No, I didn't have to work into believing it. At the end of the day I had the same game day ritual. And I slept great last night, came to shootaround, got my work in, I went home, took my usual pregame nap, got up, ate my pregame food, came to work.

I didn't feel anything, actually, I was just excited about the moment. It is what it is. You come to work and you put in the work and you study the game for myself, and you just do everything to put yourself in a position to succeed.

There's no reason to add any more pressure to it. And I'm not saying it was the result of a win, because I've done the same thing for a long time now, but for myself, just being able to just stay even keeled no matter the situation, I think it's good for our ball club.

Q. This game lasted almost three hours and you had a triple double. This game had a little bit of everything. Do you feel as emotionally and mentally drained as you did the last game when you guys lost? LEBRON JAMES: I'm about there. I'm about there. It lets me know that I did what I was supposed to do when I'm emotionally and physically drained at the end of a Finals game. If I'm not, then I didn't do what I was supposed to do. So that would be two games in a row where I felt like that, and now I got to get my mind ready once again.

Q. The NBA life means a lot of traveling. Do you have a particular routine on the plane? How do you maximize your rest? LEBRON JAMES: Well, it's quite a long flight going out west, and so we try to get a little bit of sleep. I try to get a little bit of sleep and then I get up and get treatment on the plane. Just give my body as much treatment as I can on the plane and get a couple hours of rest. Obviously it's going to be probably not too -- it won't be a long -- it won't be easy for me to sleep tonight because I'm still going on with the game and things of that nature, my body is not feeling as great, but I'll be fine tomorrow. Q. How did your approach to the game and your style of play evolve between the first Final you played in and this one? LEBRON JAMES: I stunk in the first Finals. I don't stink anymore.

Q. Kyrie was in here and he said that he always is looking at social media. He says he sees everything. You've talked about a lot of times about how you're past that, you don't listen to critics and everything. Do you talk to your teammates when all of this stuff is kind of floating around about curses and Cavs in seven tweets that kind of go viral on social media about kind of pushing that stuff away? LEBRON JAMES: No, I don't see it. So I can't talk to my teammates about it because I don't see it. Unless one of the guys brings it to me, either as a joke or something they want me to see, but I don't -- it don't go -- I don't have notifications on my phone. I don't have none of the apps on my phone right now so I can't even like click on it and accidentally click on it. I don't get involved in that, man. Because I'm like, I know, like I'm like every other mention when I play. And I don't -- I don't like it because people just be talking like -- people talk crazy, man. I'm going to leave it at that. So I know better.

Q. Tonight's game was so physical, and also dramatic. How do you guys make it to focus on basketball and not to be distracted and especially keep the lead? LEBRON JAMES: At the end of the day the game is supposed to be played physically. Both teams were wanting to put themselves in the record books and put themselves in basketball history. So try to do whatever it takes to win. I think both teams definitely are trying to do that from game to game.

Q. Just your reaction to that first quarter, first half, both record setting. I mean, you came within a free throw of 50 for a quarter and 80 whatever it was at half. Did you have a minute to think about what was going on? LEBRON JAMES: No. You can't. First of all, if you take a minute to see what's going on versus this team, they hit you with a 50-point quarter. There's no -- you can't -- we were just playing in the moment. We're just playing good basketball. We were in attack mode, and it results in us having 49. The reason we didn't hit 50 is because I can't shoot a free throw. So, but I'll be better in Game 5.

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LeBron James: The Warriors have championship DNA, and we do as well - News 5 Cleveland

Nebraska prison officials say the number of inmates refusing to provide DNA samples has dropped to just 13 as the State Corrections Department works to remedy missteps 20 years in the making.

After a World-Herald investigation in April, department officials said 78 inmates had refused to comply with a 20-year-old state law requiring all convicted felons to submit their DNA into a database that can help clear unsolved crimes.

The inmates refusal to submit DNA samples not only defied state law and a judges orders, it potentially delayed justice for victims of unsolved crimes. Such DNA samples go into a database that can link prisoners to unsolved crimes across the country.

Six weeks after the newspapers report, the state has gone from 78 to 13 inmates who have refused to provide their DNA, Nebraska Corrections Director Scott Frakes said in a press release Thursday.

I am committed to collecting DNA samples from every incarcerated person and believe the course we have charted will result in full compliance with state statute, Frakes said. In those cases where additional steps are necessary, we will take them.

Frakes outlined a new system, implemented May 12, in which Corrections officials now attempt to collect the inmates DNA within two days of their arrival in prison.

Previously the state had provided an inmate with a form in which he could check a box allowing him to opt out of providing a DNA sample.

Now if an inmate refuses, Corrections officials impose disciplinary sanctions, such as stripping him of telephone and canteen privileges or even time off for good behavior.

The last step in the process: Frakes said state officials will go to court to reinforce orders to collect DNA on the refusing inmates. The Nebraska Attorney Generals Office already has done so in four cases, including the cases of two Omaha killers who refused to provide DNA.

Faced with the renewed orders, three of four Omaha holdouts recently submitted their DNA. DNA from the fourth was obtained by force, which typically involves prison guards holding the inmate while a cotton swab is swiped inside his mouth.

Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine applauded the efforts. Kleine and his chief deputy, Brenda Beadle, had urged Corrections to collect the DNA by force, if necessary.

Corrections officials previously had believed they werent allowed to use force to collect DNA, citing a 1997 Nebraska Attorney Generals opinion that said state law didnt allow the use of force.

However, Kleine pointed out that a month after that 1997 attorney generals opinion, the Nebraska Supreme Court upheld the states use of force in collecting a serial rapists blood.

Were very pleased that theyre getting done what needed to be done, Kleine said.

One of the ways the state is doing it: The Nebraska Attorney Generals Office filed a motion to enforce order on a case involving convicted killers Derrick Stricklin and Terrell Newman. In it, Corey OBrien a lawyer in Nebraska Attorney General Doug Petersons office noted that prison workers notified Stricklin and Newman of their requirement to submit DNA when they arrived in 2014 and again on May 11 of this year. Each time, the men refused.

Presented with the motion, the judge in their case, Shelly Stratman, minced no words.

The defendant has chosen to defy the law and the order of the court, Stratman wrote. Notwithstanding the defendants refusal to submit a DNA sample, he is still required to do so.

She then authorized Corrections to use such force as is reasonably necessary to obtain or collect a DNA sample.

Kleine said he still doesnt believe that the state needs to seek a further court order to obtain the DNA. Judges typically order DNA collection as part of their sentencing orders.

Honestly, I think that was an unnecessary step, Kleine said. Nonetheless, we support whatever efforts it takes to get this done.

We wish it could have been done quicker, but were glad its happening. Its been our goal all along.

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Corrections officials say they have reduced number of inmates who ... - Omaha World-Herald

Nebraska making progress on getting prisoners' DNA samples Washington Times (AP) - Nebraska prison officials have reduced to 13 the number of inmates who have refused to give DNA samples as required by state law, down from 78 reported earlier this year. The Nebraska Correctional Services Department said in a news release ... and more »

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Nebraska making progress on getting prisoners' DNA samples - Washington Times

Scientists sequenced DNA from mummies from the settlement of Abusir el-Meleq, south of Cairo, and were buried between 1380 B.C. and A.D. 425.

For the first time, researchers have successfully sequenced the DNA from Egyptian mummies. The findings reveal that these ancient people were more genetically similar to populations living in the eastern Mediterranean a region that today includes Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan and Iraq than people living in modern-day Egypt.

"We were excited to have at hand the first genome-wide data of ancient Egyptian mummies," said Stephan Schiffels, leader of the Population Genetics Group at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, in Jena, Germany. [24 Amazing Archaeological Discoveries]

Schiffels and a team of scientists from Poland, Germany, England and Australia led by Johannes Krause, a geneticist also at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, published their research in the May 30 issue of the journal Nature Communications.

Worldwide, the remains of thousands of mummies from ancient Egypt have been excavated, but obtaining intact, undamaged DNA from the bodies has proved challenging.

"Researchers were generally skeptical about DNA preservation in Egyptian mummies, due to the hot climate, the high humidity levels in tombs and some of the chemicals used during mummification, which are all factors that make it hard for DNA to survive for such a long time," Schiffels told Live Science.

Map of Egypt depicting the location of the archaeological site Abusir-el Meleq (marked by the orange "X") and the location of the modern Egyptian samples (marked by the orange circles).

Other research teams made at least two previous attempts to sequence DNA from mummies, but those efforts were met with intense skepticism. The first undertaking occurred in 1985 and was later shown to be flawed, because the samples had become contaminated with modern DNA. The second analysis, published in 2010, focused on King Tutankhamun's family, but it could not satisfy the critics either. Both studies used a technique called polymerase chain reaction (PCR), which can hone in on specific fragments of genetic information but can't distinguish ancient DNA from modern DNA, nor differentiate human DNA from other types that may be present.

In this latest study, Krause and his colleagues used a newer technique called next-generation sequencing, which can extract human DNA from other types and can tell whether a genetic fragment is very old or suspiciously new (an indication that it might be modern).

The scientists focused their efforts on the heads of 151 mummified individuals who lived in the settlement of Abusir el-Meleq, south of Cairo, and were buried between 1380 B.C. and A.D. 425.

To reduce the risk of contamination, the researchers extracted the DNA inside a laboratory clean room. There, they irradiated the surfaces of bone and soft tissue for 60 minutes using ultraviolet radiation, which destroyed any modern DNA. The scientists then removed samples from inside soft tissue, skull bones and the tooth pulp. [Photos: 1,700-Year-Old Egyptian Mummy Revealed]

Following these and numerous other rigorous steps, the researchers found that the soft tissues had no viable DNA. However, the bone and tooth samples for 90 individuals contained ample amounts of DNA from mitochondria, the organelles inside a cell that convert oxygen and nutrients into energy. Mitochondrial DNA is passed down from mother to child and so contains genetic information from only the mother's side of the family.

To get a more complete picture of a person's genetic history, the researchers needed DNA from the cell's nucleus, which contains DNA from the father's side of the family as well as the mother's. But that DNA was very poorly preserved, Schiffels said.

"We were only able to generate three nuclear genomic data sets," he said.

After extracting the DNA, the researchers enriched it and made copies for analysis. They then compared it with the DNA of other populations, both ancient and modern, that lived in Egypt and Ethiopia.

The researchers found that over the 1,300-year time span, the genetics of the people in the sample remained consistent a remarkable finding, the researchers said, because ancient Egypt had been conquered several times in those years, including by the Greeks and Romans, and through it all, served as a trading crossroads for many different people.

Yet when the scientists compared their samples to genetic data from modern-day Egyptians, they found a difference. The DNA from the ancient Egyptians contained little DNA from sub-Saharan Africa, yet 15 percent to 20 percent of mitochondrial DNA in modern Egyptians shows a sub-Saharan ancestry, the researchers said.

Schiffels said the scientists can only speculate on why the genetic changes showed up later. "One possible cause could be increased mobility down the Nile and increased long-distance commerce between sub-Saharan Africa and Egypt," he said.

These changes could have been related to slave trading, which reached its height in the 19th century, he said.

He added that the team hopes to continue building on this research by analyzing more mummies from more time periods and more sites in Egypt.

Original article on Live Science.

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