Scientists Show You Can Collect DNA From the Air (engadget.com) 32
Researchers at the Queen Mary University of London have shown that you can collect "environmental DNA" (eDNA) from the air. Engadget reports: The team used a peristaltic pump combined with pressure filters to grab samples of naked mole rat DNA for five to 20 minutes, and then used standard kits to find and sequence genes in the resulting samples. This method not only pinpointed the mole rats' DNA (both in their housing and in the room at large), but caught some human DNA at the same time.
Lead author Dr. Elizabeth Claire said the work was originally meant to help conservationists and ecologists study biological environments. With enough development, though, it could be used for considerably more. Forensics units could pluck DNA from the air to determine if a suspect had been present at the scene of a crime. It might also be useful in medicine -- virologists and epidemiologists could understand how airborne viruses (like the one behind COVID-19) spread.
Lead author Dr. Elizabeth Claire said the work was originally meant to help conservationists and ecologists study biological environments. With enough development, though, it could be used for considerably more. Forensics units could pluck DNA from the air to determine if a suspect had been present at the scene of a crime. It might also be useful in medicine -- virologists and epidemiologists could understand how airborne viruses (like the one behind COVID-19) spread.
I collect DNA from the air every spring (Score:2)
This is nothing new... (Score:1)
Pornstars have been showing everyone how they collect airborne DNA since practically forever.
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I'm with you. Every year I'm tempted to yell at the trees "Listen, I do not deposit my genetic material in your respiratory passages, and I would appreciate the same courtesy."
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In Asimov's robot stories people have filters installed in their nostrils. Don't know how that would work, the collected material has to be removed somehow or they will clog... But someone needs to invent them.
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Fingers work. Or robot fingers could help.
Could be worse.... (Score:2)
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I collect DNA from the air every spring
You go down to Daytona for a bukkake?
Evolutionary vector. (Score:3)
It might also be useful in medicine -- virologists and epidemiologists could understand how airborne viruses (like the one behind COVID-19) spread.
Some change is in the air.
The Sniffer! (Score:2)
Hide from Gattaca's DNA police (Score:1)
By scrubbing his skin every day, would Vincent Freeman have been able to evade Gattaca's DNA police? I initially thought no, but now I wonder.
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By scrubbing his skin every day, would Vincent Freeman have been able to evade Gattaca's DNA police? I initially thought no, but now I wonder.
No. Despite his efforts, everyone sheds skin cells every day, hairs fall out (as seen in the movie with an eyelash), speaking throws saliva around, and don't forget the oils left behind when you touch something. Think his keyboard where they could have, and should have, tested. Run a swab over the keys and he would have been found out earlier.
Also, the movie wasn't that good, though the Hitchcock-esque stair scene was interesting.
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In the movie they showed that he vacuumed his keyboard maybe he also wiped it down off camera. 8^)
Science Fiction Becoming Science Fact (Score:5, Interesting)
Imagine a world where DNA sequencing can be performed on a mobile device in microseconds. You could "lock on" to the DNA in question and follow it through the air creating "trail" to follow. You could then combine all of those trackers, aggregating the pathways of millions of people identifying their travel history, interests, genetic makeup, pets and animals and kindly remind them that the t-shirt they glanced at 2 days ago is available to buy...again I suppose since you already purchased it.
While this is great science if it can be duplicated, this is going to get abused heavily from overzealous police forces looking to "solve" the crime with the right color suspect that happens to be walking by on a windy day with the crime scene window open to "give the forensic analysts some air" to advertisers who want to sell their cattle to the next giant corporation. Why can't we just have nice things. Sigh.
On the other hand... (Score:2)
While this is great science if it can be duplicated, this is going to get abused heavily from overzealous police forces looking to "solve" the crime with the right color suspect that happens to be walking by on a windy day with the crime scene window open to "give the forensic analysts some air" to advertisers who want to sell their cattle to the next giant corporation. Why can't we just have nice things. Sigh.
All sentences based on DNA evidence suddenly became invalidated due to the contamination of evidence because suspect might have went to the same theater as someone else.
While genetic patents become unenforceable due to the contamination and thus invalid.
Or they tack on a year or so of probability and statistics studies to law school.
Future lawyers become even more insufferable and we have to finally kill them all and go back to trial by Thunderdome.
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The problem is, outdoors the dna is only going to stick around for minutes, if not seconds. So you'd need extensive real time capturing all over the place. Indoors you have a bit more of a time window, but eventually the air is going to be cycled too. So kinda the same situation...you need closer to real time monitoring. And In that case, video monitoring that we've had for years will be mostly superior in the vast majority of cases, with the added benefits of also telling you specifically what they were do
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The problem is, outdoors the dna is only going to stick around for minutes, if not seconds. So you'd need extensive real time capturing all over the place. Indoors you have a bit more of a time window, but eventually the air is going to be cycled too. So kinda the same situation...you need closer to real time monitoring. And In that case, video monitoring that we've had for years will be mostly superior in the vast majority of cases, with the added benefits of also telling you specifically what they were doing and when.
This will probably be more useful if somehow adapted to pick up that airborne dna after it's been deposited on surfaces or something to determine if someone had been at the scene of a specific serious crime..similar to collecting hair samples left at the scene, but only for criminals who were a bit more careful.
The real life The Sniffer [wikipedia.org]!
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You could "lock on" to the DNA in question and follow it through the air creating "trail" to follow.
Go read Clarke and Baxter's The Light of Other Days. Late in the book, that is exactly what happens, but they use the DNA trace to follow the person back through time.
Vacuum cleaners instead of scoopers at protests (Score:3)
In the movie "Soylent Green", the police just cut to the chase and used bulldozer/garbage trucks to scoop up the protesters, and dump them into the container in the container/bed/bin. And then haul them off to the human -> Soylent Green factories.
A little messy for these days, with protesters posting video clips of this to social media.
So in the future, the police will just have giant vacuum cleaners to scoop up the DNA of the protesters. Then the police can identify and harvest the protesters offline, when nobody is looking, before hauling them off to the human -> Soylent Green factories.
Hey, this is making me hungry for a little green cracker . . .
. . . but Soylent Green has a nasty aftertaste of tear gas, these days.
How to plant false evidence (Score:2)
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Hell, even a wet fart may spread widely.
I'm doomed.
... or be convicted by misinterpreted evidence (Score:2)
[Planted evidence scenarios.] Never believe forensic experts trying to make 1+1 = 3. DNA is transportable.
Also:
Forensics units could pluck DNA from the air to determine if a suspect had been present at the scene of a crime.
And they could pick up DNA from air that had blown in on the wind or been sucked in by HVAC units or window fans from innocent passers-by that were near but never at the crime scene.
IMHO "DNA from the air" should never be considered sufficiently evidentiary of presence to be used in the
Other implications (Score:4, Interesting)
This suggests that the amount of contact necessary to leave DNA is much more casual than criminal forensics assumes. Further testing is required. Can you leave your DNA in a room by passing by an open window? Could you leave your DNA on someone else just by standing near them? Enough that they might then deposit it somewhere you have never been?
I'm sure forensics experts and prosecutors would LIKE to just say no and move on, but the science so far certainly leaves the possibility open.
DNA will still make good evidence for exclusion (your DNA not there means you weren't there) but it's use to implicate is questionable, especially the new techniques that detect minute amounts and claim to be able to work with mixed samples.
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DNA samples vary in quality. Often the sample is poor and forensics has to "amplify" it to get a reading, but in doing so it becomes less certain who it belongs to. Even with good samples it's not CSI where you get exactly 1 perfect match, it's usually 1 in 1 million at best, i.e. if the population of the country is 100 million then they are 100 matches and of course people cross borders all the time.
The problem of forensic scientists over-stating the quality and likelihood of a DNA match has been known sin
Dead skin flakes of my enemies (Score:3)
DNA foresnsics is now dead ... (Score:3)
If you can collect DNA this easily, then you can move it to where the person has never been just as easily ...
Wow, post COVID, The Police have another hit (Score:2)
"Don't stand so close to me."