Category Archives: DNA

Argentinean Mercedes Doretti has successfully identified the remains of hundreds of Central American immigrants who have perished on their dangerous journey north

By Brendan Borrell

DIGGING FOR JUSTICE: Forensic anthropologist Mercedes Doretti led a team of researchers identifying remains of Los Desaparecidos--the disappeared ones--in her native Argentina. Her work there continues today, as evidence she personally collected in the 1980s is still making its way through the country's legal system. Image: Courtesy of Richard Renaldi

"Seora, go and search for yourself." With those words, Mexican authorities sent away the grieving mother seeking clues about her daughter's killer. The year was 2001, after those authorities had discovered the bodies of eight young women in a cotton field near Ciudad Jurez on the Texas-Mexico border, across the Rio Grande from the U.S. city of El Paso. Police were unlikely to solve their cases, just like those of the hundreds of women who had been sexually abused, mutilated and killed in this lawless town, where this year alone another 60 women and girls have been murdered. The government's handling of the "Campo Algodonero" murders stood out as an egregious violation of human rights for the way the authorities botched the case and mishandled the women's remains.

The victims' mothers even came to doubt that the remains authorities had given them were their own children. In December 2003 they began working with Mercedes Doretti, a New York-based forensic anthropologist and co-founder of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team to get help in identifying the bodies.

Doretti's work in Ciudad Jurez revealed that law enforcement had misidentified three of the eight remains furnished, and her report to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights led in 2009 to an order for reparations to all the families and a condemnation of the Mexican justice system. That small victory cemented Doretti's resolve to probe deeper. She now knew that dozens of other bodies had no possible matches to local families. Where had these other victims come from?

Doretti, a stylish woman in her 50s, has spent her life supporting human rights. She studied anthropology in Buenos Aires, during the height of Argentina's "Dirty War," when the right-wing regime kidnapped, tortured and murdered some 20,000 students, activists, journalists and guerrillas. Her team's work identifying remains of the Desaparecidosthe disappeared onescontinues today, and evidence she personally collected in the 1980s is still making its way through the country's legal system. In 2007 the MacArthur Foundation awarded her a "genius grant" for her work investigating human rights abuses around the world, and she serves as a Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the United Nations Voluntary Fund for Victims of Torture.

Doretti suspected that some of the unidentified bodies in Mexico may have been migrants journeying north from Central America, and in 2009 she established the Missing Migrants project. The full scope of the problem is hard to pin down, but some 200 migrants die of exposure each summer in southern Arizona alone. Mexico's criminal gangs have kidnapped many more for extortion or murdered and buried these victims in mass graves. Doretti has created a network of forensic DNA banks in El Salvador, Honduras and Chiapas, Mexico and recently announced her first positive identifications from remains recovered in Texas and Arizona. "It's amazing what she's doing," says Bruce Anderson, forensic anthropologist with the medical examiner's office in Pima County, Arizona.

Scientific American met Doretti at her organization's spartan one-room office in Brooklyn's DUMBO neighborhood. Edited excerpts follow.

When the Argentinean dictatorship collapsed in 1982, you still thought that you might follow an academic anthropology path. How did you get introduced to forensics? I was at a demonstration against the International Monetary Fund in January 1984, and one of my friends came and said: "There's a gringo who wants to exhume disappeared people." As it happened, the American Association for the Advancement of Science had sent a scientist named Clyde Snow down to train people in forensics, but the Argentinean Anthropology Association initially did not want to get involved directly. Snow didn't have anybody to work with. Frankly, it sounded very strange to me. But after meeting him the next day, I realized everything he was saying made total senseto apply the techniques of traditional archaeology and biological anthropology into the forensic field so that we will be able to recover and identify the remains of Los Desaparecidos in the proper way.

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Forensic Anthropologist Uses DNA to Solve Real-Life Murder Mysteries in Latin America

ReportsnReports.com adds new market research report Top Ten Companies in DNA Sequencing to its store. Global sequencing products market is forecast to reach $6.6 billion by 2016.

Dallas, Texas (PRWEB) October 08, 2012

The goal of this report is to provide a more in-depth look at the top tier DNA sequencing companies as well as some of the second tier companies to look for in the near future, and to note the technological changes within the DNA sequencing industry that are sure to play a role in the years to come.

More specifically, the objectives include identifying companies that are considered the leaders in their field and the technological means these companies are using to exploit their markets and dominate their field.

Key technology points explored include:

Other major factors used to determine top companies in the field include:

INTENDED AUDIENCE

This study will be of particular interest to life-science research tools suppliers, pharmaceutical, diagnostics, nanotechnology, bioinformatics, semiconductor, and biotechnology companies. It will also be valuable to companies involved in genome sequencing projects, sequencing centers, manufacturers of microarrays, suppliers of molecular diagnostics assays, bioinformatics companies, and cancer researchers and clinicians. As this report is a profiling of top companies in the DNA sequencing field, the main audience should also include executive management personnel and marketing and financial analysts.

SCOPE

The scope of this report is focused on a select 10 companies in DNA sequencing, and the key areas in the field that are driving industry growth allowing these companies to succeed. These areas include Sanger, next-generation, and emerging sequencing technologies; the markets for sample preparation products, sequencing instruments and consumables; and bioinformatics and sequencing services. A key area BCC also explores is industry structure, noting strategic alliances and acquisitions along with pertinent patent information.

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DNA Sequencing Market Growth Driven by Top 10 Companies and Technologies

Yesterday at 10:16 PM It can clear a suspect or secure a conviction, as it did last week in Maine's oldest cold-case homicide.

By DOUG HARLOW Morning Sentinel

SKOWHEGAN - When physical evidence in the 32-year-old murder case against Jay Mercier seemed to bog down in court last month with tire tracks and old photographs, the state still had one trick left up its prosecutorial sleeve: DNA.

Rita St. Peter

click image to enlarge

Jay Mercier

HOWDNAISUSED

The past decade has seen great advances in a powerful criminal justice tool: deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA.

DNA can be used to identify criminals with incredible accuracy when biological evidence exists. By the same token, DNA can be used to clear suspects and exonerate persons mistakenly accused or convicted of crimes.

In all, DNA technology is increasingly vital to ensuring accuracy and fairness in the criminal justice system.

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DNA key to resolving decades-old criminal cases, both defense, prosecution find

Readmore: Local, Crime, News, Imogene Wilmoth Harris, Tulia Texas, Tulia Death, Tulia Woman Killed, Homicide, Murder, Tulia Homicide, Woman Killed by Blunt Force Trauma, Blunt Force Trauma, Harris Killed in Tulia, Dna Evidence, Esequiel Gomez, Dna Evidence Tulia Murder, Tulia Murder, Swisher County Murder

TULIA, TEXAS -- DNA evidence helped to link a man to the murder of an elderly Tulia woman in 2011.

According to Tulia Police, the Texas Department of Public Safety Crime Lab linked evidence from a sexual assault investigation in Willmar, Minn., to the murder of Imogene Harris.

An arrest warrant was issued for Esequiel Gomez, Jr., for the offense of Capital Murder.

Imogene Wilmoth Harris, 84 was found deceased in a Tulia residence in August 2011 by a family member. The cause of death was determined to be blunt force trauma, police said.

Authorities said Gomez had been living in Texas but was extradited to Minnesota for aggravated sexual assault. Additionally, police said Gomez was linked to an assault of an elderly person in Hico, Texas, in 2008.

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DNA evidence links man to elderly Tulia woman's murder

Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department detectives on Thursday announced that they have used DNA evidence to match a previously unknown 20-year-old woman whose body was found in 1995 to a missing person from Morro Bay.

Officials are now seeking information about the 17-year-old unsolved murder.

The body of Gail Catherine Allen, known for years as Jane Doe No. 59, was found Oct. 28, 1995, in the 21000 block of Covina Hills Road in an unincorporated area of Covina, according to a statement from the Sheriffs Department.

Her burned body was found nude in a sleeping bag that had been set ablaze and thrown from an embankment. She was burned beyond recognition, officials said.

Days before the body was found, a friend of Allen's reported her missing, according to the statement.

Early this year, Morro Bay detectives received DNA samples from Allens father, Marcus Allen of Victorville, and her mother, Deborah Forester of Colorado. After the samples were linked to Jane Doe No. 59, the case was reopened as a murder case.

Allen was believed to have worked at a Taco Bell restaurant at 1700 Main Street in Morro Bay. Detectives are looking to speak with people who worked with her, officials said.

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DNA provides identification of victim in 1995 slaying

The DNA analysis used to link a Chester County man to the killing of his father has been discounted upon further testing, according to testimony Thursday.

Parth Ingle, 26, and his mother, Bhavnaben Ingle, 52, are charged in the 2008 death of Arunkumar Ingle, who was found dead in his bedroom in Middletown Township, Delaware County. He had multiple stab wounds and his testicles were badly bruised, according to police. His alleged killers were in court Thursday for a pretrial hearing before Delaware County Court Judge Barry C. Dozer.

Samples taken from a sink drain in Parth Ingle's South Coventry home were initially thought to match Arunkumar Ingle's DNA. When the samples were sent back to a lab in Greensburg, Pa., for a more sophisticated test not originally available, the results determined it was "100 quintillion times less probable" that the DNA belonged to Arunkumar Ingle than that it was a coincidental match, according to an e-mail from prosecutors that John Kusturiss, Parth Ingle's defense attorney, read in court.

The victim, a 55-year-old Boeing engineer, was having an affair with a Russian woman he met on the Internet. According to authorities, he planned to obtain phony passports, fake his own death, and move to India with her.

The woman, Anna Sudakevich of Philadelphia, testified that she did not learn the victim was married until Parth Ingle came to her house looking for his father.

Arunkumar Ingle's plan was to leave behind $3.6 million in insurance policies for his wife and children, authorities have said.

Prosecutors said financial gain and retribution were the motives for the killing. Parth Ingle was about $43,000 in debt at the time.

On Thursday, prosecutors introduced evidence of a letter that Parth Ingle allegedly wrote to relatives in India asking them not to contest an insurance settlement so the Ingle family could get the money.

When questioned, Trooper Robert Kirby said there was no evidence the letter was sent.

Also Thursday, the court heard the dramatic 911 call Bhavnaben Ingle made when she reported discovering her husband's body. She could be heard screaming as 911 operators tried to calm her.

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DNA test linking son to death of Chester County man is discounted

SAGINAW, MI Kenneth T. Bluew's DNA matches the DNA from at least 26 bloodstains examined in connection with the apparent suicide of the woman who was eight months pregnant with his son, an expert testified today.

Lisa Ramos, who works for the Michigan State Police, testified during Bluew's trial today regarding the results of the tests she conducted on numerous bloodstain samples sent to her from Valerie Bowman at the state police's Bridgeport crime lab.

Bluew, 37, is charged with first-degree premeditated murder in the Aug. 30, 2011, death of Webb at North Outer and Hack in Buena Vista Township. Webb, 32, planned to name her son Braxton; the fetus' DNA showed that "it was consistent" that Bluew was the father, Ramos said.

Ramos testified that Bluew was the only DNA donor of bloodstains found on Webb's clothing, in and on the outside of Webb's Pontiac Aztek, on his uniform, and in his police cruiser.

Among those stains included those from the inside portion of a piece of a disposable examination glove found in Webb's clothes, Ramos said. She also tested the outside of the piece of the glove, and neither Bluew nor Webb could be excluded as being a donor, Ramos testified.

The stains to which Bluew was the only donor, or single source, also included a swab under the fingernails of Webb's left hand; stains on Webb's shirt, pants and bra; and one of Webb's flip flops, found in a culvert of the ditch Webb was hanging into. Last week's testimony from Bluew's fellow officers who were on scene showed that the flip flops were not touched until crime lab personnel arrived hours later.

Ramos also testified that Bluew was the only donor of a stain on the rear door of the Aztek's passenger side, which Bowman this week testified had a ridge structure in it like a fingerprint.

Bluew also was the single source of at least seven stains found inside the Aztek; all nine stains on Bluew's duty pants, the ones he told state police Detective Sgts. Allan Ogg and Jason Teddy were oldand not worn that night; a stain on the CE portion of the POLICE lettering on Bluew's tactical vest; a stain on the sleeve of his T-shirt, found with the old duty pants; and the interior of the driver's side door, the steering wheel, and the handheld police radio microphone of his police cruiser.

Ramos testified that Webb was the only DNA donor of a blood stain found on a driveway leading to the Buena Vista Township Wastewater Treatment Plant, about 270 feet by foot from where Webb's vehicle was found and next to a silver charm that appears to have come from Webb's necklace. She also was the only donor of blood stains on the left neckline of her shirt; a hoop earring and a stud earring found in her vehicle; and the driver rear door molding of her vehicle, Ramos testified.

Ramos testified that the swabs taken from under Webb's fingernails both contained two donors: Webb and a male source. Ramos testified that Bluew's DNA matched the male donor of the left hand and cannot be excluded as being the source of the right hand.

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DNA expert: Ken Bluew the 'single source' of blood found on pregnant Jennifer Webb's clothes, vehicle

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The state's highest court has overturned a sexual assault conviction.

San Francisco prosecutors have struck out in their first try to convict William Payne of murder. But they will keep swinging.

Payne, 48, was charged with first-degree murder in the 1983 death of 41-year old Nikolaus Crumbley in January, after a "cold hit DNA" test linked him to the death, according to the San Francisco Examiner.

But despite the DNA evidence proving Payne was on the scene with Crumbley, with whom he had sex, the jury hung on charges of murder.

The San Francisco District Attorney's Offcie will push for a retrial, with opening arguments scheduled for Oct. 22, the newspaper reported.

Payne was 19 when Crumbley was found dead, face down and with his pants and underwear pulled down to his ankles, at the corner of John Shelley Drive and Mansell Street near John McClaren Park.

Payne was arrested for the crime in January. The DNA evidence proves that the pair had sex, but not that Payne killed Crumbley, the newspaper reported.

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DNA Evidence Doesn't Convince Jury of Guilt in 1983 Murder

What would happen if everyone could do DNA analysis within minutes using a simple computerized box that accepted a person's cell samples on a swab and spit out the answer about a person's genetic identity automatically?

Though it sounds like the stuff of science fiction, that possibility is now within reach. And as the new capability of what's being called 'Rapid DNA' analysis takes off, law enforcement in police stations and the FBI could be using it to catch criminals without having to send DNA off to official DNA-testing labs as is done now. But it doesn't stop there. U.S. agencies could not only use this instant "DNA analysis in a box" to check the identity of someone wanting to come into the country, but easily check to see if two people who say they're related really are since DNA genetic information can provide that. And that's just what governments might do with it -- there's no reason that businesses and individuals couldn't easily be doing DNA analysis, too, in the years to come.

What if Ethernet failed?

What if Windows 8 flops?

"What science has given us is some very miraculous work in the DNA world," said Peter Verga, chief of staff for the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy at the U.S. Department of Defense, during his keynote at the Biometric Consortium Conference in Tampa recently.

After years of research encouraged by the FBI and DoD, 'Rapid DNA' analysis-in-a-box is here, proving a DNA profile can be produced automatically, with no need for professional lab training, in 90 minutes or less. Two companies, integenX and NetBio, are the manufacturers whose 'Rapid DNA' equipment is now under government evaluation at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the U.S. Army Criminal Investigative Laboratory. More companies, including Lockheed Martin, are expected to soon follow.

Verga noted it would theoretically be possible in the future to do a DNA profile on travelers coming into Dulles Airport, for example, for security purposes. But whatever ends up happening with the new power for instant DNA analysis, it must "adhere to the rule of law" and conform to the idea that one must "do good with biometrics and avoid evil," he added.

The 'Rapid DNA' analysis is only going to get more powerful in what it can do.

Richard Selden, CEO of NetBio, describes its ANDE System as a 'Rapid DNA' box that measures 26.6''-inches by 16.5-inches' x 23.1-inches' and can take an inserted cotton swab with cell samples from someone's cheek and produces a DNA profile in 83 minutes. Ruggedized for air, truck and hand-carry, it's "stable for at least six months without refrigeration," said Selden, speaking about it at the conference. It works in "an uncontrolled environment" with "no manual processing."

To match DNA, it can connect to a remote database or do the DNA matching in a local database onboard. The technology developed by NetBio is already being expanded into next-generation device that will accept very minute samples of DNA collected from cups or virtually anywhere for a DNA profile of the individual. The box is also being expanded to do "kinship analysis," Selden pointed out.

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Security: What if all law enforcement agencies could do instant DNA analysis?

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Fifty hours. Thats how long it now takes to decode and interpret a newborn babys genome an undertaking that used to take weeks, or even months. And those two days can mean the difference between life and death for a critically ill infant.

In a paper published in the journal Science Translational Medicine, researchers led by Stephen Kingsmore, director of the Center for Pediatric Genomic Medicine at Childrens Mercy Hospital, describe a new genetic test that can rapidly screen the DNA of babies in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) for about 3,500 diseases known to be linked to single-gene mutations. Of these, doctors can treat about 500.

Up to a third of babies admitted to the NICU have a genetic disease. But many newborns are not diagnosed properly and may therefore miss the opportunity for a potentially life-saving therapy. Many of the symptoms of such genetic diseases are both general and shared by many different conditions, which makes them difficult to diagnose; whats more, many of the genetic conditions in question are rare, so most physicians, even NICU specialists, may not be familiar them or unable to recognize their symptoms. Currently used genetic tests are also too expensive and time-consuming to be clinically useful; because the tests can take weeks, or sometimes months, most NICU babies will have either gone home or died by the time the results are ready.

(MORE: 23andMe Wants FDA Approval for Personal DNA Testing. What Can It Reveal?)

So Kingsmore and his colleagues collaborated with Illumina, a manufacturer of gene-sequencing machines, to shorten the time it takes to both decode an entire genome and generate a clinically useful analysis of that sequencing. Thanks to recent advances in the ability to break up and re-knit DNA, the company was able to sequence the 3 billion base pairs of the genome in just 27 hours down from weeks.

But decoding a genome is only half of the challenge. Words in a book dont make sense unless they are put together in a grammatically sensible way, and similarly, DNA is meaningless unless its analyzed in the context of genes, which in turn are connected to human functions or conditions. So for two years, Kingsmores team worked on special software designed to help doctors use genetic information to make accurate diagnoses and guide ill babies to the right treatment.

The software simplifies and standardizes the often complex process of diagnosis, by allowing doctors to click on the symptoms they see in newborns; the program then puts together a list of the genes that might be most likely to be at fault. Doctors can then compare these genetic suspects to the newborns sequenced genome to see if any of the same genes are mutated; if they are, they can pinpoint a diagnosis.

(MORE: Decoding Cancer: Scientists Release 520 Tumor Genomes from Pediatric Patients)

There is a phenomenal need for more accurate and faster diagnosis in the NICU, says Kingsmore, adding that this is a setting where we know that giving treatments is one of the most effective things we can do in medicine from the cost standpoint, since these patients have 65 to 70 years of life to live out.

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Good News for NICU Babies: Faster DNA Testing for More Accurate Diagnoses