Category Archives: DNA

Damoine A. Wilcoxson, 21(Photo: Provided by Boone County Sheriff's Office)

Two bills that would allow police to takeDNA samples from people who are arrested, but not yet convicted, are steadily advancing but lawmakers have added safeguards for people who may have been falsely accused.

In Indiana, law enforcement officials can only enter DNA samples into a national database upon a felony conviction. But some lawmakers are pushing for a lower threshold, allowing police to takea DNA samplewhen they make a felony arrest.

Bills similar to those proposed this session House Bill 1577 and Senate Bill 322 have failed to generate support in the past, but the issue gained traction last year when DNA from an Ohiodatabase that includes arrestees helped solve boththe slaying of an elderly Zionsville man in November and attacks on two Indianapolis police stations.

The Indiana House of Representativeson Monday opted to send House Bill 1577 to a third reading. The House will likely vote on the bill Tuesday after its final reading.

Rep. Greg Steurerwald, one of the bill's authors, says he "totally expects" the bill will pass the House.

Supporters say taking a DNA sampleupon arrest will expand the database and make it easier for police to solve crimes, as well as clear the name of innocent people. Despite some early concern from some legislatorsabout privacy, the bills have generated bipartisan support, and faced few obstacles thus far.

"It will not only help solve crimes, it will help prevent crimes," Steurerwald told IndyStar.

However, oin Monday, the House approved an amendment that prohibits police from taking a DNA sample during a warrantlessarrest. Rather, police must wait until a judge finds probable cause for the arrest. Lawmakers amended the bill after the issue was raised during a February committee hearing.

"The court must be involved in each of these circumstances," Steurerwald said during the bill's second reading.

A similar bill, authored by Sen. Erin Houchin, is also weaving its way through the Indiana Senate.

In the original Senate bill, a DNA sample could only be expunged from the database if the individual was acquitted of felony charges in a trial. That meant that the DNA sample would remain in the database even if prosecutorsnever filed criminal charges after an arrest, or if charges were dismissed.

But lawmakers have dialed back that measure considerably. Now, an individual can expunge the DNA sample if the case is dismissed, if the felony is reduced to a misdemeanor or if prosecutors do not file charges within a year of the arrest. The House bill includes similar criteria.

Houchin said those changes implemented upon a recommendation from the Indiana State Police lab put the bill in line with similar legislation in other states.

The bill heads to the Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday where lawmakers will evaluate its cost. Houchin said a study conducted by Indiana University Purdue University-Indianapolis estimated the measure's crime prevention capabilitiescould save taxpayers $60 million a year.

"The savings will help the bill pay for itself,"' Houchin said.

Call Star reporter Madeline Buckley at (317) 444-6083. Follow her on Twitter:@Mabuckley88.

Read or Share this story: http://indy.st/2m1DMBg

See the original post:
Bill that allows police to take DNA upon arrest advances - Indianapolis Star

The early settlers snatched up the rich, loamy land along the Feather River to grow grapes and orchards.

Edward Mathews, an Irishman who fled the potato famine, was peddling vegetables and didnt have the cash for that kind of soil.

During heavy rains, the Yuba River would flow so hard into the Feather at Marysville, it pushed the Feather back north into Jack Slough, named for a freed slave who in 1861 sold Mathews 200 acres of its poor red soil.

On that backwashed clay, the Mathews clan would scratch out a living grazing livestock.

If you came into the bank with red soil on your boots, they wouldnt loan you money, said Edwards great-grandson Charlie Mathews, 77, who lives on the land today.

But the Mathews family did well for themselves. The arrival of a type of ricefrom Japan that grew in sunlight this far north transformed the cursed clay into a blessing: Water didnt drain through it, giving the ricegrass the pooled paddies it thrived in.

Life in the region has long evolved around the ebb, flow and overflow of the Feather River. Its meandering course and merciless moods dictated where soil was good, which crops farmers grew, where they built towns, how deep they dug wells, where families went broke or dynasties were born.

When California dammed the Feather River as part of its monumental project to bring water to Southern California and other parts of the state, the river became more predictable, but not totally so. Levees blew out in 1986 and 1997 and caused widespread flooding, similar to inundations that hit before the Oroville Dam was finished in 1967.

And the crisis at the dam last week, when more than 100,000 people wereevacuated due to potential failure of an emergency spillway, showed that nature relentlessly works to rip down humanitys efforts to control it. Residents remain anxious as another big storm is expected to hit the area Monday.

Farmers here are keenly aware of one point: They live at the pleasure of the river.

Al Montna remembersthe eerie moonlight glimmer off the tin roofs of houses floating downstream.

Its been more than six decades since the floodwaters hit, but he still pictures it perfectly. They were the homes of his classmates.

He was 10 at the time, living south of Yuba City near the river. His dad was busy trying to move equipment at the farm a few miles away, leaving his wife and kids perched on high ground of the family home.

I heard this roar. I can still hear it, Montna said. It was Christmas Eve 1955.

The flood, caused by a levee break at Shanghai Bend, killed 38 people and destroyed 450 homes. Waters rose to the roofs of low-lying barns.

Seeing the waters surrounding them, Montnas family evacuated to the nearby Sutter Buttes dormant lava domes that loom 2,000 feet above the floodplain like a volcanic beacon for the bedraggled refugees of the valley floor.

His fathers crops were lost and most of the family farm was destroyed. His dad feared financial ruin and died of a heart attack three months later.

Montna lived through two more great floods along the river in 1986 and 1997. But the thought of pulling up stakes never crossed his mind.

Were very ingrained here. My grandfather came here as a French immigrant. ... He drowned in that river, Montna said. This is home. This is part of our soul.

Montna Farms not only recovered but is prospering, he said, specializing in premium, short-grain Japanese rice used in sushi.

When county officials ordered the emergency evacuation of Yuba City last week, many residents again fled to the buttes for safety. Montna took different measures.

As a board member of Levee District 1 of Sutter County, he and his entire work crew scrambled to shore up the levees, looking for leaks that could lead to bigger breaches.

Flood fighting is in our DNA, he said.

A few miles upstream on Feb. 12, Sarb Johl listened in disbelief to the alert that the emergency spillway on Oroville Dam might fail within 60 minutes. He loaded his wife and 92-year-old mother into a car and told them to drive to stay withfamily in the hilly Sacramento suburb of Roseville. He stayed an extra hour talking to other farmers and fellow officials on his levee board, determining what to do.

We didnt have time to rationally plan: Would the water break to the west or the east? Could the levees hold it? You have to believe it when someone is telling you a 15-foot-high wall of water is coming down. That is a lot of water, Johl said.

His father, who came from Punjab, India, began farming peaches and prunes on this reclaimed land in the 1960s. The area is known as Yuba CountyLevee District 10, which was formed in 1909 to make the floodplain available to farmers.

While most orchard growers here dont directly draw from the river, they still survive on it. Because the state water project continued to direct the Feather River water down its historical course, the river replenishes the aquifer as it always has. Johl pumps water from wells and now conserves it by using drip irrigation for his trees, which favor the porous loam slurried down from the mountains over eons.

On Feb. 13, seeing that the spillway had not collapsed, Johl came back to move his equipment onto the levee. On the other side, the silty river sifted slowly through a wild land of oak and cottonwood. A family of deer picked delicately over the bank and into the orchards safety, as one of Johls workers tried to fix a valve in the levee that the farm needed for the land to drain.

His family had survived the last two big floods, but the notion that the dam could fail a nightmare that had never crossed his mind spooked him. As soon as he was done, he got in his truck and headed to Roseville.

***

The Oroville Dam was sold to residents as a flood control measure, but no one who understood water politics ever doubted its core purpose was to bring more water to Southern California. Population studies in the 1950s predicted millions of people would continue toflow into the region with not enough water, even with canals from the Colorado River and Eastern Sierras, to meet their needs.

Plans to dam the stormy rivers of the North Coast the Eel, Mad, Klamath and Smith were scuttled as too costly or controversial. That left the Sacramento Rivers main tributary, the Feather, to become the linchpin of the states ambitious new water project.

The three forks of the Feather gathered snowmelt tributaries from nearly 6,000 square miles of the Northern Sierra and Southern Cascades, converging in the canyons north of the small town of Oroville. The main stem then flowed another 71 miles to the Sacramento River, and on to San Francisco Bay.

Govs. Earl Warren and Goodwin Knight helped get what was then called the Feather River Project rolling in the 1950s, and the deadly 1955 flood gave it a needed dose of urgency. Gov. Pat Brown lobbied groups up and down the state notably the powerful Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which feared the project might threaten its legal battles with Arizona for Colorado River water to bring it to fruition.

By the time the renamed State Water Project was largely completed in the 1970s, the flow was diverted in the Sacramento Delta before it flowed into the San Francisco Bay. From the Clifton Court Forebay, it was pumped up into the 444-mileCalifornia Aqueduct that would follow the new Interstate 5. With branch canals and massive pumps and siphons to cross hills and mountains, Feather River water now poured out of taps in the Bay Area, Bakersfield, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles and the Inland Empire.

But during rainy winters, the old levee system just below the Oroville Dam still struggled to contain the flow.

In Olivehurst, Mary Jane Griego said the evacuation order brought flashbacks of the floods in 1986 and 1997.

Griego, owner of Dukes Diner,was stopped at a red light outside of Yuba City that night in 1986 when a police patrol car screeched into the intersection.

He saidthe levee broke. The water is coming, Griego recalled. Then she heard a rumble and saw a churning wave of water heading toward her. It was like a scene from The Poseidon Adventure.

That flood blasted through the county mall in the nearby town of Linda, which still stands gutted and empty.

After the 1997 flood, Griego decided to run for Yuba County supervisor, with her top campaign issue to fix the levees in the southern portion of the county. She won and, since that time, the levees have been improved and fortified through the more populated areas.

While farmers and officials along the river understand the hydrology around them like cardiologists know arteries and veins, millions of other Californians rely on the same system with varying degrees of awareness. Some know enough to complain about its great flaws its waste by evaporation or its environmental impact. Others marvel at its grand ambition, allowing great cities to exist where they otherwise could not. Some dont even know it exists.

North of Lake Oroville in the small wooded town of Magalia, Keith Noble runs a hunting and fishing shop that depends on anglers coming to the lake. With the lake closed due to the spillway crisis, he was irked that several bass tournaments had been scrubbed.

Noble thinks the state could have prevented the damage if officials hadnt neglected the spillway all these years in his mind, another example of the northern reaches of California getting short shrift by the big-city liberals controlling Sacramento.

At the southern end of the project, Feather River water pours out of a 28-mile-long pipeline into the Lake Perris reservoir, more than 500 miles from its source and nearly 700 feet higher in elevation.

Saddled between high hills of boulders and white sage, the lake draws campers, boaters and fishermen from across the region. The water teems with rainbow trout, Florida bluegill, black crappie and carp. Anglers there have caught record-size Alabama spotted bass.

But the dam has its own problems. In 2005, the state Department of Water Resources discovered that parts of the foundation might be at risk during an earthquake and ordered the water lowered by 25 feet.Construction to fix the problem is expected to be completed by early next year. But the drought reduced the lake by an additional 17 feet.

Brian Place, manager ofthe boat rental and fishing shop at Lake Perris, looks out at the low water and wonders when the state will open the spigot to bring it back up.

He says Water Resources told him the lake would come up 10 feet in January, but its just starting to fill.

Within the last week, its come up about 3 feet, he said.

He hopes the state sends the water before the fish lay their eggs in spring, and then maintains it at that level, so a sudden change in depth doesnt kill off the spawn.

He can only wait and see.

State bureaucracy feeds Lake Perris, and no meteorologist can read that forecast.

joe.mozingo@latimes.com

Twitter:@joemozingo

phil.willon@latimes.com

Twitter: @philwillon

ALSO

The government failure at the heart of the Oroville Dam crisis

Oroville Dam is about to face its next big test as a new storm moves into the area

Life below Oroville Dam: Stoicism, faith ... and cars poised for a fast getaway

Oroville Dam is just part of California's crumbling infrastructure

See the article here:
'Flood fighting is in our DNA': To live by the Feather River is to know its power and danger - Los Angeles Times

A blackteenager who was stopped by police last year while walking through a San Diego park is challenging the Police Departments policies and practices for obtainingDNA from minors without first notifying a parent.

Lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union of San Diego & Imperial Counties filed a federal lawsuit last week on behalf of the boy and his mother, Jamie Wilson.They contend police officers violated the boys civil rights in March when they detained, handcuffed and searched him at Memorial Community Park in Logan Heights, and then took a sample of his DNA without a warrant or his mothers consent.

According to the complaint, San Diego Police Department policy allows officers to obtainconsent from a minor for DNA collection the same way they would for an adult.

California law restricts the collection of DNA from a juvenile for inclusion in Californias DNA database, but the lawsuit says San Diego has sidestepped that by maintaining its own local database. Officers are required to notify a juveniles parents only after a DNA sample has been taken.

San Diegos policy systematically works to circumventparents right to advise their kids, saidJonathan Markovitz, one of the attorneys representing Wilson and her son.

A Police Department spokesman declined to comment about the lawsuit but provided a copy of the agencys procedures for dealing with juveniles. The document states that a minors DNA can be taken and stored in the departments own data bank if obtained legally and for investigative purposes.

We have just been made aware of the lawsuit filed by the ACLU.This case is pending litigation we therefore cannot comment further, police Lt.Scott Wahl said in an email.

The plaintiffs are seeking a permanentinjunction from the court that would forbid the San Diego Police Department from enforcing the citys policy on DNA collection from juveniles without a warrant or parental consent. They are also asking for an order compelling the Police Department to return any DNA samples from the teen identified in the lawsuit.

They also are seeking unspecified monetary damages.

According to the lawsuit, police officers chose to conduct a pat-down search of the 16-year-old boy identified in the document by the initials P.D. and four of his friends not because there was a reasonable suspicion they had been involved in a crime, but because they were black juveniles, some of whom were wearing blue, walking through a park in southeast San Diego on a particular day.

The officers expectedgang activity in the park that day, March 30, a supposed gang holiday, the lawsuit said. Blue is a color associated with a particular street gang.

P.D. and the other minors told the officers they had been playing basketball in the area.

After the pat-down search, the officerssearched a duffel bag P.D. had with him that afternoon and found an unloaded handgun. They collected DNA samples from him and his four companionsafter obtaining their signed consent.

The friends were released and P.D. was booked into Juvenile Hall.

The difficulty with kids giving consent is that they are particularly vulnerable to authority,Markovitz said, noting that children and teens are less likely to think through the consequences of their actions a concept state and federal laws have acknowledged.

Hesaid the search of the teensduffel bag was unlawful and any consent the teen had given for the taking of his DNA sample was essentially coerced, given that the officers let his friends go after they each signed a form agreeing to let the officers swab the inside of their mouths to collect DNA.

There wasnt anything approaching knowing and voluntary consent. ... He wasnt given the opportunity to talk to his mother,Markovitz said.

Per department procedure,a San Diego policeofficer has to notify a supervisor or contact a field lieutenant for approval before collecting a mouth swab DNA sample from a juvenile. The office must also fill out a Consent to Collect Saliva form and obtain the minors signature.

An officer who takes a mouth swab sample from a juvenile will notify the parent or legal guardian that a sample was taken and document that information on a report,according to the department.

According to the lawsuit, the District Attorneys Office filed charges in Juvenile Court against P.D. on April 4, stemming from the discovery of the gun in the duffel bag. He remained inJuvenile Hall until April 8, when he was released and placed on home supervision.

On June 27, a judge threw out the evidence related to the gun because it was fruit of an unlawful search that violated P.D.s Fourth Amendment rights, under the U.S. Constitution. A month later, the court dismissed the charges but no order was made to destroy the teens DNA sample.

Its caused tremendous emotional and financial suffering, Markovitz said, referring to the effects of the arrest and subsequent court proceedings on the teen and his family.

Hismother is expected to appearat a news conference Wednesday, when ACLU representatives will discuss the lawsuit and issues related to local policing.

dana.littlefield@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @danalittlefield

Original post:
ACLU sues San Diego police over how it collects DNA from juveniles - The San Diego Union-Tribune

Science Daily

Powerful optical imaging technology catches DNA naturally fluorescing Science Daily Vadim Backman and Hao Zhang, nanoscale imaging experts at Northwestern University, have developed a new imaging technology that is the first to see DNA "blink," or fluoresce. The tool enables the researchers to study individual biomolecules as well as ...

Link:
Powerful optical imaging technology catches DNA naturally fluorescing - Science Daily

Its a scientifically proven method of crime fighting that is banned in all but a handful of states. Why arent more crime labs using it?

Its called familial DNA testing, and it has been widely restricted because some see it as an invasion of innocent peoples privacy. Others remain convinced that it is justifiable since it solves crimes and even brings notorious serial killers to justice. You decide.

Routine DNA testing takes samples of blood, saliva, semen, skin cells and other bodily remnants from a crime scene and runs them through a national FBI database called the Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, to see whether the unknown perpetrators DNA is already in the system. If no match is found, the next step could be a familial DNA test.

Heres how it works:

CODIS is the largest DNA registry in the world, containing profiles on more than 14 million individuals. Say a man was arrested in the late 1990s for assault with a deadly weapon and was required to give a DNA sample. His DNA profile would automatically have been added to the CODIS registry, to be stored forever.

If police were to recover DNA years later from, say, a murder scene, a familial DNA test could reveal whether the murder suspect came from the same family tree as the assailant. If the test were to find a familial match, police could then put a surname to the DNA material.

Familial testing can even expose the familial relationship, be it a father-child or brother-brother match.

Heres a real-life case:

When dogged detective Lt. Ken Landwehr in Wichita, Kan., finally zeroed in on Dennis Rader as being the infamous BTK Killer (bind, torture and kill killer), he wanted to be absolutely certain that he had the man who murdered 10 people over a 17-year span.

Rader had a history of taunting police with cryptic letters and, finally, with a floppy disk full of information about his murder spree. Landwehr found data on the disk that led to a computer at a local church. He discovered Rader was the church council president.

Landwehr then got a warrant to obtain a genetic sample from Raders daughter. After using a familial DNA analysis on her Pap test, technicians concluded that her DNA profile was a familial match to the DNA left at one of the BTK Killers murder scenes.

This gave Landwehr the evidence he needed to take the serial killer off the streets. Rader pleaded guilty, sparing the community a long, painful and expensive trial.

Familial DNA testing also brought a Los Angeles serial killer to justice. For more than 20 years, detectives had been looking for a perp nicknamed the Grim Sleeper, who was so named for the long spans of time in between his murders.

When a young man named Christopher Franklin was arrested on a weapons charge in 2008, his DNA was registered in CODIS. Later, during periodic rechecks of the Grim Sleepers DNA, a familial match popped up indicating Franklin was closely related. The conclusion was that Franklin was either the father of or the son of the serial killer.

A detective posed as a busboy at a pizza place, and upon testing a partly eaten slice Franklins father had left, a familial match to the crime scene DNA was found. As a result, 57-year-old Lonnie David Franklin was convicted of 10 murders and sentenced to death.

Hundreds more major crimes and cold cases have been solved using familial DNA testing both here in the United States and in the United Kingdom, where the technique was pioneered. Yet criticism about the invasion of privacy continues.

Surely, the Grim Sleepers son gave up his right to privacy when he broke the law and was required to give a DNA sample. But what about the daughter of the BTK Killer? She likely never could have imagined that her routine gynecological test would be used to convict her father of multiple murders and then stored in CODIS in perpetuity.

Advancements in forensic science force us to consider weighty issues. Should people lose their right to privacy just because a family member becomes a criminal? Or does the publics right to community safety trump the rights of the individual?

The debate has kept most states from adopting laws allowing familial DNA testing. So far, only 10 states California, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Michigan, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming perform it.

Study after study over the years has concluded that criminal behavior runs in families, either for genetic or environmental reasons. One study concluded that only 8 percent of families account for 43 percent of all crime. Armed with that knowledge, doesnt it make sense to shake the family tree as a last resort?

Diane Dimond is the author of Thinking Outside the Crime and Justice Box. Contact her at diane@dianedimond.com, follow her on Twitter: @DiDimond, or click here to read previous columns. The opinions expressed are her own.

Follow this link:
Diane Dimond: Shaking the Family Tree for DNA to Solve Crimes ... - Noozhawk

The mysterious murder of the estranged half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un added another bizarre twist when Malaysian police said the body will not be released until they get DNA samples from his next of kin.

Kim Jong-nam, 46, was slain Monday while he was passing through the Kuala Lumpur airport. It is believed that he was doused with a fast-acting poison by a woman who claims she was duped into the crime.

A fourth suspect, this one from North Korea, was arrested by Malaysian police late Friday. The man, identified as Ri Jong Chol, 46, was nabbed in Selangor near Kuala Lumpur. The police statement gave no other details about why he was considered a suspect.

An Indonesian woman, Siti Aishah, her Malaysian boyfriend, and Doan Thi Huong, 29, who was traveling on a Vietnamese passport and wearing an LOL t-shirt during the encounter with Kim, were arrested earlier in the week. Indonesias police chief said Aishah was duped into thinking she was part of a comedy show prank and did not know who Kim Jong-nam was.

Police are hunting four men believed to have been accomplices. They released airport security camera photos of the four, believed to be North Korean agents who watched the murder go down from an airport restaurant about 50 yards away.

South Korea and the US both placed the blame for the murder on North Korea. It is believed the mercurial Kim Jong-un has executed or purged a slew of high-level officials, including several relatives, since taking power in 2011.

North Korea failed to stop Malaysian authorities from doing an autopsy. Malaysian authorities said a first autopsy was inconclusive and a second was slated for late Friday.

We will categorically reject the result of the post-mortem, said North Korean Ambassador Kang Chol, who claimed Malaysia may be trying to conceal something and is colluding with hostile forces.

Selangor state police chief Abdul Samah Mat told Reuters the body would not be released until next-of-kin DNA had been obtained to confirm the identity of the victim.

Kim Jong-nam is believed to have two sons and a daughter with two women living in Beijing and Macau, where he was headed when he died.

The dictators half-brother had spoken out publicly against his familys dynastic control of the isolated, nuclear-armed North Korea. He reportedly fell out of favor in Pyongyang in 2001, when he was caught trying to enter Japan on a false passport to visit Tokyo Disneyland.

Alternative theories to his murder are floating around, including that he was a known gambler and owed money to mobsters. Macau is home to multiple casinos. With Post Wire service

Excerpt from:
Police need next of kin's DNA before releasing Kim Jong-nam's body - New York Post

Slide: 1 / of 1. Caption: Getty Images

Dont take this the wrong way, but youre just data. Genes built you, from the tips of your toes to the crown of your head. In that sense, youre not unlike a computer: Code produces the output that is your body.

In fact, for the past two decades, scientists have usedactual DNA as if it were literal code, a process calledDNA computing, to do things like calculating square roots. Today, researchers report in the journal Nature Communications that theyve deployed DNA to detect antibodiessoldiers yourbody produces to fight viruses and suchby running a sequence of molecular instructions.Someday, the same kind of calculations could automatically release drugs in response to infections.

The key to making it all work is that DNA strands really like to stick to each otherin very specific ways. In a test tube, you mix a bunch of DNA molecules, says Maarten Merkx, a biochemist at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands and a lead author on the new paper. By choosing the sequences right, they undergo a series of reactions. A single strand from one double-helical molecule of DNA attaches to astrand from a different DNA molecule, a process calledhybridization that creates a newDNA molecule, which in turn combines with yet more DNA in the mix. Think about what happens if you mix orange juice and champagne: You get something novel and quite frankly better.

Critically, certain combinations of certain DNA molecules happen only in the presence of an antibody. If you add together the right molecules, you can get a signal out of the system when that particular hybridization happens. Thats kind of like what happens in a computer cranking code; hybridization is the yes or the 1 and a lack of hybridization is a no or the zero. In this case, the scientists added ingredients so that the DNA would fluoresce if the hybridizations happened just rightthats the output.

Sure, you can test blood for antibodies. Thats the old fashioned way. The idea here is to one day use DNA computing as a persistent monitor for antibodies. You could use that setup to create DNA nanocapsules carryingdrugs. The DNA that our DNA computer produces can be used to unlock this capsule, says Merkx. His team was looking specifically at viruses like influenza and HIV, so maybe the package could deliver more virus-killing antibodies.

The study also represents a leap in how DNA computing works in general. It certainly offers another tool in the toolbox of those who want to design complex computing strategies, says Philip Santangelo, a bioengineer at Georgia Tech who wasnt involved in the research. You could use proteins and enzymes to build computing architectures that use many biomolecules, not just DNA. More complexity means more precision and sophistication in the kinds of programs scientists can run.

So sure, you may just be data. But in the right hands, that data could one day do wonders for medicine.

Read the original post:
Running DNA Like a Computer Could Help You Fight Viruses One ... - WIRED

Researchers at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) present a new method that should enable controlled drug delivery into the bloodstream using DNA computers. In the journal Nature Communications the team, led by biomedical engineer Maarten Merkx, describes how it has developed the first DNA computer capable of detecting several antibodies in the blood and performing subsequent calculations based on this input. This is an important step towards the development of smart, intelligent drugs that may allow better control of the medication for rheumatism and Crohns disease, for example, with fewer side-effects and at lower cost.

An analogy for the method presented by the TU/e researchers is a security system that opens the door depending on the person standing in front of it. If the camera recognizes the person, the door unlocks, but if the person is unknown, the door remains locked. Research into diagnostic tests tends to focus on the recognition, but what is special about this system is that it can think and that it can be connected to actuation such as drug delivery," says professor of Biomedical Chemistry Maarten Merkx.

DNA computer

To be able to perform such an action, intelligence is needed, a role that is performed in this system by a DNA computer. DNA is best known as a carrier of genetic information, but DNA molecules are also highly suitable for performing molecular calculations. The sequence within a DNA molecule determines with which other DNA molecules it can react, which allows a researcher to program desired reaction circuits.

Nature Communications - Antibody-controlled actuation of DNA-based molecular circuits

Antibodies

To date biomedical applications of DNA computers have been limited because the input of DNA computers typically consists of other DNA and RNA molecules. To determine whether someone has a particular disease, it is essential to measure the concentration of specific antibodies agents that our immune system produces when we are ill. Merkx and his colleagues are the first to have succeeded in linking the presence of antibodies to a DNA computer.

Drug delivery

Their method translates the presence of each antibody into a unique piece of DNA whereby the DNA computer can decide on the basis of the presence of one or more antibodies whether drug delivery, for example, is necessary. The presence of a particular DNA molecule sets in motion a series of reactions whereby we can get the DNA computer to run various programs, explains PhD student and primary author Wouter Engelen. Our results show that we can use the DNA computer to control the activity of enzymes, but we think it should also be possible to control the activity of a therapeutic antibody.

Medication

In treating chronic diseases like rheumatism or Crohns disease, such therapeutic antibodies are used as medication. One of the potential applications of this system is to measure the quantity of therapeutic antibodies in the blood and decide whether it is necessary to administer any extra medication. Merkx: By directly linking the measurement of antibodies to the treatment of the disease, we may be able to prevent side-effects and reduce costs in the future.

Abstract

DNA-based molecular circuits allow autonomous signal processing, but their actuation has relied mostly on RNA/DNA-based inputs, limiting their application in synthetic biology, biomedicine and molecular diagnostics. Here we introduce a generic method to translate the presence of an antibody into a unique DNA strand, enabling the use of antibodies as specific inputs for DNA-based molecular computing. Our approach, antibody-templated strand exchange (ATSE), uses the characteristic bivalent architecture of antibodies to promote DNA-strand exchange reactions both thermodynamically and kinetically. Detailed characterization of the ATSE reaction allowed the establishment of a comprehensive model that describes the kinetics and thermodynamics of ATSE as a function of toehold length, antibodyepitope affinity and concentration. ATSE enables the introduction of complex signal processing in antibody-based diagnostics, as demonstrated here by constructing molecular circuits for multiplex antibody detection, integration of multiple antibody inputs using logic gates and actuation of enzymes and DNAzymes for signal amplification.

They have shown that Antibody-Templated Strand Exchange (ATSE) of peptide-functionalized DNA strands provides a unique and robust molecular approach to translate the presence of an antibody into a ssDNA output. Both thermodynamic and kinetic effects contribute to the remarkable efficiency of ATSE. First, the bivalent peptide-dsDNA product of the ATSE reaction forms a highly stable 1:1 cyclic complex with its bivalent target antibody, thus making the displacement reaction thermodynamically favourable. Second, colocalization of the peptide-functionalized oligonucleotides on the two antigen binding domains increases their effective concentration, hence enhancing the rate of the exchange reaction. An important application of the ATSE reaction is that it allows the use of DNA-based molecular circuits in antibody-based diagnostics, introducing complex signal-processing capabilities beyond those achievable in convential immunoassays. In addition to the logic gates and multiplex detection demonstrated in this work, many other features of DNA-based molecular circuits could be employed, including tresholding, signal amplification, feedback and signal modulation. The importance of ATSE to the field of DNA-nanotechnology is that it provides a generic method to use antibodies as inputs for DNA-based molecular computing and the actuation of 3D DNA-nanoarchitectures. Since antibodies can be generated that bind with high affinity and specificity to almost any molecular target, any of these biomarkers can now also be considered as potential inputs for DNA-based molecular circuits, by competing with ATSE-mediated generation of DNA input strands. As a generic mechanism that allows protein-based control of DNA circuits, ATSE complements previously developed molecular approaches for DNA-based control of protein activity. The development of these and other molecular strategies to integrate the rich functional properties of antibodies and other proteins with the inherent programmability of DNA-nanotechnology will provide access to truly autonomous biomolecular systems with sophisticated signal integration, processing and actuation properties.

SOURCES- Nature Communications, Eindhoven University of Technology

Read more here:
DNA nanocomputer detect antibodies and could be used to control drug delivery into the bloodstream - Next Big Future

When the suspect in an horrific attack fled the scene in Redmonds Marymoor Park, he left behind a key piece of evidence that had this happened years prior wouldnt have been of much use.

Report: Filmmaker shocked by scope of sex trafficking problem in the U.S.

King County Prosecuting Attorney Daniel Satterberg says the attack in the park in August is a rare crime, however, its a crime everyone lives in fear of.

On Wednesday, 33-year-old transient Charles Stockwell Jr. was charged with first-degree assault for allegedly attacking a Redmond woman while she was walking her dog. The Seattle Times reports Stockwell hid in the bushes and attacked the woman from behind.

Satterberg told KIRO Radios Ron and Don that, after beating the woman and nearly breaking one of her arms he popped it out of the socket he took a shoe lace from his own shoe and began to strangle her.

Stockwell was allegedly scared off after another man ran toward the two after hearing the womans screams.

According to Satterberg, the shoe lace Stockwell used to strangle the woman was the key evidence.

He left skin cells on the ends of the lace, he explained.

The first time the crime lab ran the lace nothing appeared. That was because Stockwell wasnt in the system yet. When they ran it a second time, his DNA appeared, after being convicted of a felony in Kitsap County.

Satterberg says it is likely that law enforcement would have never caught up to Stockwell if DNA testing wasnt as advanced and readily available as it is today.

King County Sgt. Cindi West agrees.

Technology and science have really increased our ability to solve crimes in a lot of ways, she said. Whether its technology with video cameras and such that people have, or science-type with DNA and such. Were really happy we have this system and that it helped us identify this suspect.

Read more here:
'Rare crime' in Redmond proves how useful DNA can be - MyNorthwest.com

BOSTON A new imaging technique takes advantage of DNAs natural ability to blink in response to stimulating light. The new approach will allow unprecedented views of genetic material and other cellular players. Its the first method to resolve features smaller than 10 nanometers, biomedical engineer Vadim Backman said February 17 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

DNA and proteins dont naturally give off light, conventional wisdom holds, so scientists have developed fluorescent dyes to attach to such molecules to make them visible in the darkness of a cell (SN: 6/5/13, p. 20). But Backman and Hao Zhang, both of Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., discovered that when DNA is tickled with particular wavelengths of light, it blinks on, momentarily shining brighter than it would with the most powerful fluorescent tags. Backman and Zhang designed a setup that excites cells with light and then collects the spectra of the emitted light, allowing them to discern different kinds of biomolecules.

The scientists are calling their setup SICLON, for spectroscopic intrinsic-contrast photon-localization optical nanoscopy. They have already used it to peer at the inner walls of microtubules, structures that help separate chromosomes during cell division. The approach has allowed the researchers to collect images of structures a mere 6.2 nanometers across (a DNA molecule is roughly 3 nanometers across). The researchers hope to explore physical changes that occur when cells become cancerous, Backman said.

See more here:
New imaging technique catches DNA 'blinking' on - Science News