Fabricating Dna

[Rani]

[color="#4B0082"][b]This came up on a re-run of Law and Order SVU this evening and I was curious enough to run a search to see if what they were talking about was possible...... What a can of worms this is going to open.[/b][/color]

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August 18, 2009
DNA Evidence Can Be Fabricated, Scientists Show
By ANDREW POLLACK

Scientists in Israel have demonstrated that it is possible to fabricate DNA evidence, undermining the credibility of what has been considered the gold standard of proof in criminal cases.

The scientists fabricated blood and saliva samples containing DNA from a person other than the donor of the blood and saliva. They also showed that if they had access to a DNA profile in a database, they could construct a sample of DNA to match that profile without obtaining any tissue from that person.

“You can just engineer a crime scene,” said Dan Frumkin, lead author of the paper, which has been published online by the journal Forensic Science International: Genetics. “Any biology undergraduate could perform this.”

Dr. Frumkin is a founder of Nucleix, a company based in Tel Aviv that has developed a test to distinguish real DNA samples from fake ones that it hopes to sell to forensics laboratories.

The planting of fabricated DNA evidence at a crime scene is only one implication of the findings. A potential invasion of personal privacy is another.

Using some of the same techniques, it may be possible to scavenge anyone’s DNA from a discarded drinking cup or cigarette butt and turn it into a saliva sample that could be submitted to a genetic testing company that measures ancestry or the risk of getting various diseases. Celebrities might have to fear “genetic paparazzi,” said Gail H. Javitt of the Genetics and Public Policy Center at Johns Hopkins University.

Tania Simoncelli, science adviser to the American Civil Liberties Union, said the findings were worrisome.

“DNA is a lot easier to plant at a crime scene than fingerprints,” she said. “We’re creating a criminal justice system that is increasingly relying on this technology.”

John M. Butler, leader of the human identity testing project at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, said he was “impressed at how well they were able to fabricate the fake DNA profiles.” However, he added, “I think your average criminal wouldn’t be able to do something like that.”

The scientists fabricated DNA samples two ways. One required a real, if tiny, DNA sample, perhaps from a strand of hair or drinking cup. They amplified the tiny sample into a large quantity of DNA using a standard technique called whole genome amplification.

Of course, a drinking cup or piece of hair might itself be left at a crime scene to frame someone, but blood or saliva may be more believable.

The authors of the paper took blood from a woman and centrifuged it to remove the white cells, which contain DNA. To the remaining red cells they added DNA that had been amplified from a man’s hair.

Since red cells do not contain DNA, all of the genetic material in the blood sample was from the man. The authors sent it to a leading American forensics laboratory, which analyzed it as if it were a normal sample of a man’s blood.

The other technique relied on DNA profiles, stored in law enforcement databases as a series of numbers and letters corresponding to variations at 13 spots in a person’s genome.

From a pooled sample of many people’s DNA, the scientists cloned tiny DNA snippets representing the common variants at each spot, creating a library of such snippets. To prepare a DNA sample matching any profile, they just mixed the proper snippets together. They said that a library of 425 different DNA snippets would be enough to cover every conceivable profile.

Nucleix’s test to tell if a sample has been fabricated relies on the fact that amplified DNA — which would be used in either deception — is not methylated, meaning it lacks certain molecules that are attached to the DNA at specific points, usually to inactivate genes. [/size][/font]
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[font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif][size=2][color="#4B0082"][b]Anybody wanna take a guess on how many cases might be subject to reverse once the ambulance chasers get a hold of how easy this is to do these days?[/b][/color][/size][/font]
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[font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif][size=2][color="#4B0082"][b]'Rani[/b][/color][/size][/font]

[LZ22]

I'll weigh in with my opinion. Personally, I think this kind of falls into a mini category of conspiracy theory. I honestly don't think anyone is going around fabricating a bunch a DNA and going on killing sprees.[font="Arial"] [/font][size=2][font="Arial"]“I think your average criminal wouldn’t be able to do something like that.” This quote kind of sums up how I feel. The average criminal isn't going to have access to high-tech computers/software, dna labs, dna databases, and everything else needed to conduct this. Near the beginning, theres a quote that says any biology major could do this. That may be true, however, but the same thing applies...nobody has all this necessary equipment laying around. An average criminal is not going to know how to use a centrifuge to separate white blood cells from red ones. I just don't see all of a sudden theres all these false identifications because everyone is fabricating dna. The only thing I could see is if its a high profile assassination and they need to frame someone to take him down or some crazy fiction-like story.[/font][/size]
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[size=2][font="Arial"]Just my opinion though. At least not today... maybe in 50 years when biotechnology is much more advanced and cheap. [/font][/size]

[BBKakes]

Repo: The Genetic Opera

Watch it.

[Rani]

[quote name='LZ22' date='23 April 2010 - 08:53 AM' timestamp='1272037987' post='465098']
I'll weigh in with my opinion. Personally, I think this kind of falls into a mini category of conspiracy theory. I honestly don't think anyone is going around fabricating a bunch a DNA and going on killing sprees. [size="2"][font="Arial"]"I think your average criminal wouldn't be able to do something like that." This quote kind of sums up how I feel. The average criminal isn't going to have access to high-tech computers/software, dna labs, dna databases, and everything else needed to conduct this. Near the beginning, theres a quote that says any biology major could do this. That may be true, however, but the same thing applies...nobody has all this necessary equipment laying around. An average criminal is not going to know how to use a centrifuge to separate white blood cells from red ones. I just don't see all of a sudden theres all these false identifications because everyone is fabricating dna. The only thing I could see is if its a high profile assassination and they need to frame someone to take him down or some crazy fiction-like story.[/font][/size]
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[size="2"][font="Arial"]Just my opinion though. At least not today... maybe in 50 years when biotechnology is much more advanced and cheap. [/font][/size]
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I agree with you about the framing aspect. Maybe if someone had access to the equipment and hated you (for example) enough to acquire your DNA and then run through the sequencing, then yeah framing you for something is doable, but that's not the real issue. We've come to accept DNA as being an absolute confirmation of guilt in our courtrooms. Even if all the other evidence supported your innocence, if your DNA was present you were guilty. Now what we thought was irrefutable turns out to have been anything but. It opens the door wide for DNA challenges on both existing and future convictions. The legal morass has the potential to be huge.

'Rani

[judgeposer]

Let's not lose sight that the scientists involved in this study have some affiliation or connection to a company designing a "countermeasure" to fabricated DNA, which I don't believe entirely coincidental. That comment from John Butler, that the average criminal wouldn't be able to do what these scientists point out as possible, skews our concern then to those who [i]do [/i]have the ability to fabricate DNA findings/results - the government, in the form of police departments and prosecutors.

One one hand, we can take this news as we would any conspiracy theory; we can doubt its plausability to the extent that the conspiracy involves numerous parties. Put another way, the more parties that would have to be involved for the theory to be so, the less likely the theory is so. Then again, we also know that crime labs and serologists across the country have been uncovered to have fabricated DNA and other evidence to help win convictions - including the FBI laboratory!

Still yet, introducing evidence of contamination or of a laboratory framing seems, to me, a most difficult task. A defendant would first have to show a break in the chain of custody - that at some specific point, the evidence was exposed to contamination; here, that means someone else's DNA was introduced to produce a false result, or that some wholesale fabricated DNA result was produced by the lab. In the end, or in most cases, a jury decides...so, I say, framing or no framing, a jury of "peers" still decides. Even introducing these scientists findings and conjecture must survive pre-trial scrutiny of passing the Frye, Daubert, or some other test of the admissibility of scientific information.

[Rani]

[quote name='judgeposer' date='23 April 2010 - 10:51 PM' timestamp='1272088273' post='465206']
Let's not lose sight that the scientists involved in this study have some affiliation or connection to a company designing a "countermeasure" to fabricated DNA, which I don't believe entirely coincidental. That comment from John Butler, that the average criminal wouldn't be able to do what these scientists point out as possible, skews our concern then to those who [i]do [/i]have the ability to fabricate DNA findings/results - the government, in the form of police departments and prosecutors.

One one hand, we can take this news as we would any conspiracy theory; we can doubt its plausability to the extent that the conspiracy involves numerous parties. Put another way, the more parties that would have to be involved for the theory to be so, the less likely the theory is so. [b]Then again, we also know that crime labs and serologists across the country have been uncovered to have fabricated DNA and other evidence to help win convictions - including the FBI laboratory!
[/b]
Still yet, introducing evidence of contamination or of a laboratory framing seems, to me, a most difficult task. A defendant would first have to show a break in the chain of custody - that at some specific point, the evidence was exposed to contamination; here, that means someone else's DNA was introduced to produce a false result, or that some wholesale fabricated DNA result was produced by the lab. In the end, or in most cases, a jury decides...so, I say, framing or no framing, a jury of "peers" still decides. Even introducing these scientists findings and conjecture must survive pre-trial scrutiny of passing the Frye, Daubert, or some other test of the admissibility of scientific information.
[/quote]

'Nuff said.

'Rani

[Matto]

I don't see this as being any more of a problem than planting original DNA. It seems that going through the trouble of fabricating DNA would be far more difficult than acquiring some from a person's home or garbage (in the form of hair, blood, or saliva). Real DNA from an innocent person and fabricated DNA would be planted the same way, and in order to fabricate DNA without access to the database you need a sample of the real DNA so why not just plant that since it can't be proven to be fake?