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Extracting DNA from the air – DNA evidence of human occupancy in indoor premises
- dc396 2y agohttps://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119177/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119177/ was conservative. Great movie though.
- Mistletoe 2y agoI feel like this is one of those prescient movies like Pleasantville and Idiocracy we should force voters to watch again before voting.
- gunian 2y ago[dead]
- bilekas 2y agoSo glad someone mentioned that. A great movie I still enjoy today!
- nick238 2y agoDoes seem strange in retrospect that if looking for 'invalids' is so paramount, just install Hoover air curtains everywhere.
- treetalker 2y agoFrom the abstract: > Detectable levels of DNA were also observed in air and dust samples from ultra-clean forensic laboratories which can potentially contaminate casework samples. Great news for criminal defense attorneys.
- thfuran 2y agoThe defense attorneys of criminal criminal forensics lab technicians at least.
- moontear 2y agoHow would that argument go? As far as I understand it, the DNA of the occupants of said lab may be found. That would mean that the criminal samples may also contain DNA of the lab occupants/scientists. Isn’t that the case currently as well and those DNA parts would be omitted?
- archerx 2y agoWhat if the murderer works in the lab?
- greenpresident 2y agoThat would ideal, yet we still got things like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_of_Heilbronn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_of_Heilbronn Woman at a cotton swab factory was identified after being considered a serial killer.
- yzydserd 2y agoIt’s possibly not the GP’s point, but in general the more DNA that is available the better from a defense perspective. Many wrongful convictions involve a lack of physical evidence. Recent advances like “touch dna” and “m-vac” have led to new DNA evidence used in actual innocence decisions. Too often, a jury convicts a likely suspect on weak circumstantial evidence. Just as with Touch DNA, Air DNA will create new problems with avoiding contamination. The path toward Air DNA has been known for years [0]. Wouldn’t be surprised to learn crime scene investigators have been sampling and storing air in high profile cases ready for the tech to catch up. [0] https://www.science.org/content/article/dna-pulled-thin-air-identifies-nearby-animals https://www.science.org/content/article/dna-pulled-thin-air-...
- mrtksn 2y agoIt cuts both ways, there was this high profile case of the son of a very rich and powerful family brutally murdering his working class girlfriend in his family mansion with some family present, motives still unknown. In the autopsy they discovered sperm from a 3rd person on her body, tried to claim that it was an infidelity case(you get different sentece depending on your motives and circumstances) but later it was revealed that this was just a contamination during the autopsy. So, the more forensic options the better but likely longer and more expensive trials. All lawyers win.
- paulluuk 2y ago> just a contamination during the autopsy. How does sperm end up on her body during the autopsy? Are we talking necrophilia or are there multiple murdered bodies laying next to each other and the tools are re-used or something?
- mrtksn 2y agoIRRC The official explanation is that there were a few autopsies going on at the same time in that facility and it came from the body next to hers. The public opinion was that they bribed the technician to contaminate her body. The whole case is a huge mess with attempts of cover ups, months long manhunts and all kinds of conspiracy theories. The killer was sentenced to 24 years of prison but unalived himself in prison and there're still conspiracy theories saying that he actually escaped to China because he was studying Chinese in prison prior that. This happened more than 10 years ago and last year they opened his grave to check the remains and again it was confirmed that that's him. Yet, this is still not enough to end the public discussion and conspiracy theories. Anyway, if anyone is curious this is the case in question: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Münevver_Karabulut https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Münevver_Karabulut Unfortunately, the juicy literature around that is mostly in Turkish.
- bozhark 2y agoYou can say he killed himself it’s not kitkots
- steve_adams_86 2y agoAt work we do this with DNA floating around in the ocean (have to track down all those nasty invasive crabs) but I wouldn’t have guessed we could do this with the air around us as well. That’s so cool. Maybe we should spin up an air-based version for the office to keep track of who’s in coming to work the most
- faangguyindia 2y agoMore like who is sick a lot (sneezing and distributing dna on multiple surfaces in the blast radius)
- MostlyStable 2y agoYeah, eDNA is exactly what I thought of when I saw this.
- DecentShoes 2y agoJeff Bezos is probably already throwing millions of dollars at this in case it'll help him punish people for having a toilet break.
- Lanolderen 2y agoFart detector
- SpicyUme 2y agoDo you think this would become doable by private citizens in the near future for a reasonable amount of money? I've been curious about how far upstream the sculpins are in our local streams. I've seen some in pretty small streams but looking for them typically involves standing still in very cold water for long enough to see them move.
- steve_adams_86 2y agoI’m not sure! Because the water would move the dna relatively quickly it could be hard to get good results at the higher ends of their range. And I’m not sure about costs, but I’ll look into it. One strategy that might work, though you’d need to take care and get permission: create a barrier to downstream so sculpins can’t come upstream, and place a trap above the barrier and see if any enter the trap after a few hours. That should tell you if they’re occupying that part of the stream. Just sticks with a mesh net placed as a barrier should be sufficient to prevent any downstream occupants from coming up and entering the trap. Another would be to place a camera in the water and review the footage. I use this approach with an iPhone 15 Pro (I just stick it straight in the stream) and I get excellent results. There are always really cool animals popping up. Here’s an example: https://youtu.be/N9PLra7amfs?si=kZ01cFZ8upKLxNPb https://youtu.be/N9PLra7amfs?si=kZ01cFZ8upKLxNPb This was in a very tiny puddle off the side of a creek in summer. At a glance it appeared empty, but after putting the camera in and walking away for 10 minutes or so, all kinds of creatures like this sticklebacks came out of the detritus.
- a_bonobo 2y agoThis is a slightly older paper, note that air environmental DNA now has progressed a lot, especially for species mapping. Here's a cool recent paper showing you can extract DNA of local species from spider webs, by sequencing DNA stuck to spider webs from next to a zoo https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2589004224001251 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S258900422...
- h1fra 2y agoI have always wondered why DNA is an accepted evidence. It's so easy to contaminate a crime scene or bring someone else hair, skin cells, etc by mistake.
- rwmj 2y agoIn theory, you could do a "perfect crime" by going to a seedy part of town, picking up a dropped cigarette butt, and leaving it at the crime scene, framing someone else. In reality, criminals are angry, frightened, in a rush, high or stupid, and they make the most elementary mistakes, so DNA and fingerprints work just fine almost all the time. In like 99% of cases there's not much doubt about who did it, the main thing is to have a watertight case against them when they deny it.
- serf 2y ago>so DNA and fingerprints work just fine almost all the time. except for all of those innocent folks that have had their lives ruined by that 'almost all the time' caveat, it's great! here's a report[0] that says something like 80% + of criminal forensic work has major mistakes within it. [0]: https://www.criminallegalnews.org/news/2024/may/15/report-finds-bad-forensic-evidence-leads-more-wrongful-convictions-and-establishes-forensic-errors-typology/ https://www.criminallegalnews.org/news/2024/may/15/report-fi...
- rwmj 2y agoQuoting from that: > At 100% of the 130 examinations analyzed, seized drug analysis was the examination with the highest percentage of Type 2 errors. It was followed by pediatric physical abuse (83% of cases had forensic errors with 22% having Type 2 errors out of 60 cases analyzed), fire debris not including chemical analysis (78% of cases/38% Type 2 in 45 cases), bitemark comparison (77% of cases/73% Type 2 in 44), pediatric sexual abuse (72% of cases/34% Type 2 in 64), serology (68% of cases/26% Type 2 in 204), shoe/foot impressions (66% of cases/41% Type 2 in 32), DNA (64% of cases/14% Type 2 in 64), hair comparison (59% of cases/20% Type 2 in 143), and blood spatter (58% of cases/27% Type 2 in 33). Also this sample comes from cases where people were exonerated, which could cluster around poor quality police work in general. And is US-based where policing is all kinds of messed up.
- rgrieselhuber 2y agoSo, DNA shedding basically?
- water-data-dude 2y agoWell, that’s going to make it harder to hide from the hunter-killer bots
- the__alchemist 2y agoThis article... keeps repeating phrases about criminals, authorities, safe-houses, solving crimes. Feels off. I was expecting this to focus on the lab techniques, feasibility, technical details. It jumps straight from forensic application details to results without the in-between. I think the in-between is the interesting part. It's as if they took the token sentence that goes in an abstract about potential applications, and turned it into the meat of the article. It sounds like they are using standard extraction kits, them analyzing with RT-PCR.
- 6d6b73 2y agoI wouldn't be surprised that some some agencies *cough*Mosad*cough* are gathering DNA of leaders of all countries, and analyzing them, and potentially building bioweapons to target them. It looks like all you need to do is to get the HEPA filter from the room where the target was .
- tehjoker 2y agoThis sounds very expensive, of uncertain efficacy, and if you use an engineered organism, it will likely be detected if you use modified DNA. I accept an agency like Mosad or the CIA would attempt it though. CIA tried so many crazy schemes to try to kill or embarrass Castro and failed every time. Mosad loves balls to the walls evil schemes too, like the pagers. It would be one of those situations where they leave a stupid trace and everyone knows it's them and they are untouchable so they don't care and even enjoy the attention.
- Simon_O_Rourke 2y agoIf you know my mother in law, you don't need a DNA tester to know she's been in the restroom.
- michaelcampbell 2y agoAnyone remember the movie Gattaca?
- cytocync 2y ago[dead]
- jp57 2y agoMakes me wonder if dogs can smell your DNA.