Friday, September 11, 2015
Bringing Next-Generation DNA Sequencing to Working Crime Laboratories
The Penn State Forensic Program is collaborating with Battle Memorial Institute to get next-generation sequencing (NGS) technology in working crime labs. NGS is different methods used to sequence DNA and RNA faster and cheaper than Sanger sequencing. The hope for this research is to be able to incorporate instruments that use NGS into working crime labs and replace old equipment that is less informative. The information from NGS is supposed to help in DNA profiling and comparison of known suspects and victims. This new technology will also help generate investigative leads and identify individuals with only traces of genetic evidence.
The demand for low cost sequencing is very high. For molecular biology purposes DNA sequencing is used to study genomes and the proteins they encode for. The first human genome took $3 billion dollars and 13 years to sequence now it only takes about $4,000 and only one to two days. One method of NGS is the Single Molecule Real-Time DNA sequencing with Pacific Biosciences it would cost only $100 and take only 15 minutes!
The article can be found
http://science.psu.edu/news-and-events/research-in-action-with-new-grant-penn-state-helps-bring-next-generation-dna-sequencing-to-working-crime-laboratories
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NGS is a great sequencing method but is there any downfalls to this?
ReplyDeleteOh my, Dawn. Great question. In systematics, we are awash in data, and the struggle has been to make sense of it. I just received my first batch of NGS data, and I sh*t you not, each of the 50-some files, is a 1G TEXT file. 1G of text. One million 100bp segments that I need to piece together. One mitigating factor for forensic scientists is that the human genome is fairly well-understood, and so known sequences can provide scaffolding on which to assemble new data. Still. 3x10^9 nucleotides is a lot even with a scaffold.
ReplyDeleteSo how would this work in helping identify criminals? Would it kinda be like fingerprinting where every criminal has their DNA sequenced and put in a database so repeat offenders can quickly be identified? I know Sanger sequencing breaks down the DNA into fragments and then finds overlapping sequences to piece all the little bits together. Does NGS use a similar method or something new entirely?
ReplyDeleteI think with most DNA tech, comparisons are between markers left at the scene by some unknown person and suspects.
DeleteAlso, I would think that working with this type of equipment would by technically challenging as well. If you are working with such small samples, you would have to be very adept at controlling the environment and probably maintain a sterile field throughout the entire room, and it would still be easy to cross contaminate or destroy a sample if you didn't have a great amount of practice and control.
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