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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 ...

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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.

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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

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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.

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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

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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.

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'Rare crime' in Redmond proves how useful DNA can be - MyNorthwest.com