Category Archives: DNA

Answering call to provide DNA samples as authorities work to identify more alleged victims of suspected serial killer Herb Baumeister  WTHR

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Answering call to provide DNA samples as authorities work to identify more alleged victims of suspected serial killer Herb Baumeister - WTHR

DNA Explainer: Why is Centre planning to ban sale of loose cigarettes, remove smoking zones from airports?  DNA India

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DNA Explainer: Why is Centre planning to ban sale of loose cigarettes, remove smoking zones from airports? - DNA India

1. DNA evidence has freed a California man imprisoned for more than 38 years  NPR
2. Man wrongly convicted of Inglewood murder freed after 38 years by DNA evidence  Los Angeles Times
3. DNA testing exonerated Maurice Hastings after serving 38 years in prison  KABC-TV
4. Black man freed by DNA test after 38 years in US prison for wrongful murder conviction  Anadolu Agency | English
5. Man Released from Prison After 38 Years as DNA Proves His Innocence  PEOPLE
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DNA evidence has freed a California man imprisoned for more than 38 years - NPR

Maybe it wont be Illumina sequencing your DNA but one of its rivals  The San Diego Union-Tribune

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Maybe it wont be Illumina sequencing your DNA but one of its rivals - The San Diego Union-Tribune

COVID is a 'smart virus' that can affect DNA but that doesn't mean you can pass it on to your kids  The Conversation

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COVID is a 'smart virus' that can affect DNA but that doesn't mean you can pass it on to your kids - The Conversation

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The Lamp DNA method has been introduced in a limited capacity in Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar to test meat seized on suspicion of being beef.

Gujarat has become the first state in the country to introduce a rapid test that could confirm within an hour if the meat seized on suspicion of being beef is from a cow. The method, called the LAMP DNA method, has been introduced in a limited capacity in Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar. Experts claim it is a better alternative to conventional methods like serological analysis and other DNA analysis that take more than a day.

The development of Loop-mediated Isothermal Amplification (LAMP) for forensic investigation of closed inter-species animals was completed in 2020 by the Kadi Sarva Vishwavidyalaya under the guidance of Prof Vivek Upasani, said Nikunj Brahmbhatt, a senior faculty at National Forensic Sciences University (NFSU), in his doctoral thesis.

Currently, no other state is using this method according to my knowledge, said Prof Brahmbhatt, as per a TOI report.

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In conventional methods of testing, the identification of meat is affected if the sample had been exposed to heat for a long time or analysed after a long period of seizure. According to Prof Brahmbhatt, with the LAMP DNA method, the sample can be analysed on the spot, without the need for a lab setting. Sometimes the seized samples are mixed with more than one type of meat to dupe the agencies. However, this test can identify beef even from such smaller or cooked meat samples as well.

As per the senior DFS officials, the serological method is cost-effective and is currently used by the Cow Meat Testing Forensic Mobile Vans across the state. The molecular DNA methods are employed in disputed cases or cases where the serological methods don't give good or clear results. The LAMP DNA methods will need standardisation based on the inputs from the field. The method will then be evaluated and employed at a larger scale after standardisation the senior official said in the TOI report.

Slaughtering of cows for meat is banned in Gujarat and the Gujarat Animal Preservation (Amendment) Act, 2017 envisages punishment of up to life term and a fine from Rs 1-5 lakh for cow slaughtering.

(Edited by : Sudarsanan Mani)

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Gujarat rolls out rapid DNA test to detect if meat is beef in one hour - CNBCTV18

On Tuesday, the Edmonton Police Service (EPS) shared a computer generated image of a suspect they created with DNA phenotyping, which it used for the first time in hopes of identifying a suspect from a 2019 sexual assault case. Using DNA evidence from the case, a company called Parabon NanoLabs created the image of a young Black man. The composite image did not factor in the suspects age, BMI, or environmental factors, such as facial hair, tattoos, and scars. The EPS then released this image to the public, both on its website and on social media platforms including its Twitter, claiming it to be a last resort after all investigative avenues have been exhausted.

The EPSs decision to produce and share this image is extremely harmful, according to privacy experts, raising questions about the racial biases in DNA phenotyping for forensic investigations and the privacy violations of DNA databases that investigators are able to search through.

In response to the EPSs tweet of the image, many privacy and criminal justice experts replied with indignation at the irresponsibility of the police department. Callie Schroeder, the Global Privacy Counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, retweeted the tweet, questioning the usefulness of the image: Even if it is a new piece of information, what are you going to do with this? Question every approximately 5'4" black man you see? ...that is not a suggestion, absolutely do not do that.

Broad dissemination of what is essentially a computer-generated guess can lead to mass surveillance of any Black man approximately 5'4", both by their community and by law enforcement, Schroeder told Motherboard. This pool of suspects is far too broad to justify increases in surveillance or suspicion that could apply to thousands of innocent people.

The victim of the case only had a limited description of the suspect, describing him as 54, with a black toque, pants and sweater or hoodie and as having an accent, making for a vague, indistinguishable profile.

Releasing one of these Parabon images to the public like the Edmonton Police did recently, is dangerous and irresponsible, especially when that image implicates a Black person and an immigrant, Jennifer Lynch, the Surveillance Litigation Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation told Motherboard. People of color are already disproportionately targeted for criminal investigations, and this will not only exacerbate that problem, it could result in public vigilantism and real harm to misidentified individuals.

The criminal justice and policing system is laden with racial biases. A Black person is five times more likely to be stopped by police without cause than a white person, and Black, Latinx, and people of color are more likely to be stopped, searched, and suspected of a crime even when no crime has occurred.

Seeing the composite image with no context or knowledge of DNA phenotyping, can mislead people into believing that the suspect looks exactly like the DNA profile. Many members of the public that see this generated image will be unaware that it's a digital approximation, that age, weight, hairstyle, and face shape may be very different, and that accuracy of skin/hair/eye color is approximate, Schroeder said.

In response to the criticism after the release of the image and the use of DNA phenotyping, the Edmonton Police Department shared a press release Thursday morning, in which it announced it removed the composite image from its website and social media.

While the tension I felt over this was very real, I prioritized the investigation which in this case involved the pursuit of justice for the victim, herself a member of a racialized community, over the potential harm to the Black community. This was not an acceptable trade-off and I apologize for this, wrote Enyinnah Okere, the chief operating officer of EPS.

Parabon NanoLabs sent Motherboard a number of case studies where DNA phenotyping alone helped solve murder and assault cases. However, the case studies do not address the larger concerns, which are a lot harder to measuresuch as how many innocent people were questioned before the final suspect was arrested, and how the suspect image may have affected the publics racial biases.

According to Parabon, it has worked on hundreds of law enforcement investigations. On its site are a number of case studies, with many showing the comparison between the DNA profile and actual photo of the suspect. There are some similarities between the two photos, in that they both reflect the same race, gender, eye and hair color. Often, however, the resemblance between the generated image and the suspect ends there.

We're making predictions just from the DNA, so we have only so much information. And so when we make those predictions, it's a description and these are standing in. If the police had a witness, then they wouldn't need us, Dr. Ellen Greytak, the director of bioinformatics and technical lead for the Snapshot division at Parabon NanoLabs, told Motherboard. Were providing facts, like a genetic witness, providing this information that the detectives can't get otherwise.

It's just the same as if the police had gotten a description from someone who, maybe you know, didn't see them up close enough to see if they had tattoos or scars, but described the person. What we find is that this can be extremely useful especially for narrowing down who it could be and eliminating people who really don't match that prediction, Greytak said. In these cases, by definition, they always have DNA and so we don't have to worry about the wrong person being picked up because they would always just match the DNA.

According to Greytak, the technology creates the composite image by running the suspects DNA through machine learning models that are built on thousands of peoples DNAs and their corresponding appearances.

The data that we have on the people with known appearances are from a variety of sources, some of them are publicly available, you can request access for them. Some of them are from studies that we've run, where we've collected that information, Greytak said.

The DNA dataset being used to create these composites raises more red flags regarding the privacy questions of DNA profiling. The variety of sources, include GEDmatch and FamilyTree DNA, which are open-source, free genealogy websites that give you access to millions of DNA profiles.

People should know that if they send their DNA to a consumer-facing company, their genetic information may fall into the hands of law enforcement to be used in criminal investigations against them or their genetic relatives. None of this data is covered by federal health privacy rules in the United States, Lynch said. "While 23 and Me and Ancestry generally require warrants and limit the disclosure of their users data to law enforcement, other consumer genetic genealogy companies like GEDmatch and FamilyTree DNA provide near-wholesale law enforcement access to their databases.

Parabon NanoLabs claims that the images they generate arent based on race, but on their genetic ancestry. When we talk about a person's genetic ancestry, or biogeographic ancestry, [which] is the term that we use for that, that is a continuous measure versus race, which is categorical, Greytak said.

However, researchers argue that taking familial origin into consideration while DNA profiling, as Parabon NanoLabs does, is not an objective measurement because it results in general populations being seen as more criminal than others.

Whereas the conventional use of DNA profiling was primarily aimed at the individual suspect, more recently a shift of interest in forensic genetics has taken place, in which the population and the family to whom an unknown suspect allegedly belongs, has moved center stage, researchers led by anthropologist Amade Mcharek wrote in a study titled The Trouble With Race in Forensic Identification. Making inferences about the phenotype or the family relations of this unknown suspect produces suspect populations and families.

After a 2019 Buzzfeed investigation revealed that GEDmatch allowed police to upload a DNA profile to investigate an aggravated assault, the site changed its policies so that users had to opt in to law enforcement searches. Still, investigators are able to use a number of similar databases to upload suspects DNA and map out the suspects family tree until they can pinpoint the suspects true identity.

A notorious case in which this tactic proved successful was in finding the Golden State Killer, a serial killer named Joseph James DeAngelo. After uploading his DNA to GEDmatch, investigators were able to find one of his family members who was already in the system, and trace DeAngelo down decades after he committed the crime.

Many police departments have been collecting DNA from innocent people and people who commit minor crimes, such as Orange County, which has a database of more than 182,000 DNA profiles, almost all from people who faced misdemeanor charges, which include petty theft or driving with a suspended license. Several attorneys filed a lawsuit against the county, who claim that the database is against California law. The lawsuit says that handing over DNA is a coercive bargain, because those who hand over a DNA sample will receive lighter punishments or even a dismissed case.

A similar lawsuit was filed in New York City by the Legal Aid Society, which accuses the city of operating a DNA database that violates state law and constitutional protections against unreasonable searches. These DNA databases again perpetuate the pervasive racial biases of the criminal justice system. Because people of color, especially Black and Latino people, make up 75 percent of people arrested in the past decade in NYC, the DNA database further inscribes criminality onto marginalized demographics.

While race isnt necessarily measured by DNA phenotyping, race is produced semiotically by the visual nature of DNA composite profiles and in the already biased DNA datasets, which these profiles are derived from. The usage of DNA phenotyping may have broken open a few cold cases, but we have to ask: at what cost.

This article is part of State of Surveillance, made possible with the support of a grant from Columbia Universitys Ira A. Lipman Center for Journalism and Civil and Human Rights in conjunction with Arnold Ventures. The series will explore the development, deployment, and effects of surveillance and its intersection with race and civil rights.

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Police Are Using DNA to Generate 3D Images of Suspects They've Never Seen - VICE

As the Congress votes today to pick a non-Gandhi president in over 24 years, the Gandhis not only seek revival ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, but also overcome the widespread perception of familyism and dynasty politics, as charged time and again by the opposition.

Senior Congress leaders Mallikarjun Kharge and Shashi Tharoor will face-off in the electoral contest today as voting takes place at the AICC headquarters in Delhi and at over 65 polling booths across the country.

Notably, this will be the sixth time in the Congress 137-year history that the party is set to witness a contest for the top post which has been held by Sonia Gandhi since 1998, except for the period December 2017 to July 2019 when Rahul Gandhi took over the reigns in his hands. Ever since Rahul stepped down, his mother returned to the helm and has been serving as the interim chief of the party.

Congress presidential poll - The process

Section XVIII of the Congress Constitution states that the Chairman of the CEA is the ex-Officio Returning Officer for the election of the President. The process involves the Block Congress Committees, which elect delegates to the Pradesh Congress Committes (PCC), who in turn elect delegates to the AICC. Delegates to the AICC include former PCC presidents who have held office for at least a year and continue to be members of the party.

Once the nomination process has concluded, the chairman of the partys Central Election Authority publishes the names of the candidates who are in fray.

Any 10 delegates can propose the name of any delegate for the post. Those who do not withdraw their candidacy within seven days will be in the race for the post and their names will appear on the ballot. In case only one candidate remains, the person shall be declared elected. The key here remains the list of delegates who comprise the electoral college.

The polling is held at the PCC headquarters of each state. The counting of vote is done under single transferable vote, and the candidate with the highest number of votes is declared the president.

Congress' central election authority chairman Madhusudan Mistry said on Wednesday that the Congress presidential polls will be held by a secret ballot and no one will get to know who voted for whom. He had asserted that a level-playing field had been ensured for both candidates.

Mistry had also demonstrated to reporters the ballot boxes, ballot paper and how the votes would be cast.

He had said the sealed boxes would be transported to Delhi, kept in a strong room at the AICC headquarters and opened in Delhi. The ballot papers would be mixed before counting starts. Kharge and Tharoor not only possess contrasting demeanour but have had an equally disparate political journey.

Who votes in the election?

Some 9,000 delegates to the electoral college are eligible to vote in the exercise. Recently, Tharoor along with a section of the party suggested that the party makes public the list of delegates for transparency in the election process.

A non-Gandhi president -- need of the hour?

Speaking to DNA India, Rasheed Kidwai, senior journalist and writer of the book "24 Akbar Road", opined that election of a non-Gandhi as the party president will be a major vote of no-confidence against Rahul Gandhi.

Technically speaking, this non-Gandhi thing is technically very plausible and something which is very good, but it has some technical problem, he added.

Kidwai states that the key issue before the party today is about the political leadership which has always been with the Nehru-Gandhi family.

On whether a non-Gandhi president will be able to pull the party out of the unending crisis situation, renowned journalist Dr Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay tells DNA India: If it is a free and fair election where anybody is allowed to contest, then I think that is the best that can happen to the Congress. We cannot have any political party which becomes dependent on one individual or one family.

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DNA Explainer: In Kharge vs Tharoor, Congress votes today; know how the party elects its president and who - DNA India

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Global Oligonucleotide Synthesis Market Size And Forecast | Integrated DNA Technologies Merck KGaA, Eurofins Genomics, BioAutomation, Agilent...

Michael Anthony Louise, 79, is shown in a booking photo following his arrest on Thursday in Syracuse, N.Y. Louise faces second-degree murder charges in the 1989 deaths of a Vermont couple. Vermont State Police via AP hide caption

Michael Anthony Louise, 79, is shown in a booking photo following his arrest on Thursday in Syracuse, N.Y. Louise faces second-degree murder charges in the 1989 deaths of a Vermont couple.

WATERBURY, Vt. A drop of blood that was subjected to modern DNA testing enabled Vermont State Police detectives to make an arrest in the 1989 murder of a Danby couple found stabbed to death in their home, police said.

Michael Anthony Louise, 79, was arrested Thursday in Syracuse, New York, on two counts of second-degree murder in the deaths of George Peacock, 76, and Catherine Peacock, 73, police said.

The Peacocks were found dead on Sept. 17, 1989. There were no signs of forced entry or items of significance having been removed from the house.

Louise, who was married to one of the Peacocks' daughters, was identified as a suspect about two weeks later. Investigators at the time developed circumstantial evidence tying Louise to the killings, police said.

Detectives were unable to establish a conclusive link until forensic testing in May 2020 confirmed a DNA match to George Peacock in a spot of blood found inside Louise's car in October 1989.

The blood sample had been tested previously, but earlier tests were inconclusive.

Authorities did not say why it took two years to make the arrest following the DNA match, but said more information would be released when Louise is arraigned.

It could not immediately be determined if Louise has an attorney. It's unclear when he will be returned to Vermont to face charges.

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A drop of blood and modern DNA test lead to an arrest in a 1989 double murder - NPR