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DNA identifies last known remains of victims of notorious Green River Killer, cops say – Miami Herald

Posted: January 23, 2024 at 5:45 pm

DNA identifies last known remains of victims of notorious Green River Killer, cops say  Miami Herald

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DNA identifies last known remains of victims of notorious Green River Killer, cops say - Miami Herald

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UNE to study why rare lobsters have strange-colored shells – Spectrum News

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Ever wonder why we occasionally see lobsters with odd-colored shells? A new study at the University of New England is looking to answer that question.

The study, announced today, will involve what researchers are calling a non-invasive method of extracting DNA from live lobsters bearing the odd colors. Typically, live lobsters have brown shells, officially described as mottled in color.

Occasionally, however, some lobsters are discovered with shells bearing other colors, such as blue, yellow, orange, red or even completely white. They are rare, and usually star in viral videos by local lobster fishermen when found.

While experts have often explained the odd coloring as a genetic mutation, scientists have never actually explored the phenomenon in depth.

At this point, no one really knows in detail why some lobsters develop these multicolor variations, though we do have some theories, said Markus Frederich, professor of marine sciences at the university. We hope to use this gene expression research to study the molecular biology of these creatures in a way that is not harmful to the lobsters.

Right now, the university intends to work with several donated live lobsters bearing unusual colors such as orange, yellow, calico and multi-colored.

In June, the university acquired Peaches, a one-clawed lobster with an orange shell. Most recently, the university received two new donated lobsters: Currant, a lobster with a blue and brown shell, and Fig, a baby lobster with a purple shell.

Lobsters with such odd colors can be as rare as one in 50 million.

Along with the DNA analysis, researchers are studying the eggs of female lobsters to see if offspring will bear the unusual colors of their mother.

These rare lobsters appearing more and more on social media, and no one seems to know exactly why they turn these different colors, Frederich said. We have access to all these different lobsters, and we have the students who are eager to do the research. We thought, Lets jump on this.

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UNE to study why rare lobsters have strange-colored shells - Spectrum News

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DNA evidence identifies last known victim of Green River Killer almost 40 years later – NBC Right Now

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TIGARD, Ore. With DNA technology, investigators the last known remains of the Green River Killer have been identified almost 40 years after the victim was last seen.

While using forensic genetic genealogy testing on the bones, they were able to develop a DNA profile. They concluded and identified the victim asTammie Liles.

According to a release from theKing County Sheriff's Office, in 1985 the remains of two unidentified women were found near the Tualatin Golf Course near Tigard, Oregon. These women were identified as Tammie Liles andAngela Girdner.

That same year two other women were found nearby off Bull Mountain Road.

Green River detectives assisted with this search and identified two women asDenise Bush and Shirley Sherrill. Both were on the Green River Missing persons List and were last seen in the Seattle area in October 1982.

In 2002 and 2003, GaryRidgway was interviewed regardingthese findings and admitted to killing Bush and Sherill and stated that he "moved the bones of each to the Tigard site sometime later."

At that time, Ridgeway denied any responsibility for the murder of Lines and Girdner. But in2003, Ridgway again led investigators to a site on the Kent-Des Moines Road where he claimed that he had left a victims body.

In the area, detectives found several bones and some teeth, but no skull or major bones. Samples of the remains were sent to the University of North Texaswho obtained a DNA profile for the victim.

After uploading to DNA profile toNDIS, a national database that contains the DNA profiles of missing people and unidentified remains, no identification was made and the remainswere labeled at "Bones #20."

In November 2003, Gary Ridgeway known as the Green River Killer plead guilty tothe murder of Bones #20, Denise Bush, and Shirley Sherrill, along with 45 other victims, and was sentenced to life in prison. He also pled guilty later to a 49th victim.

While Liles was identified as a victim in 1988, the discovery of Bones 20 in King County, subsequent forensic testing that occurred last year has confirmed that the remains belong to Liles.

In 2022, KingCounty Sheriffs Office met with Othram representatives and discussed the Bones 20 case.

In August 2023, Othram contacted KCSO when they successfully built a DNA profile for the victim and their in-house forensicgenetic genealogy team had tentatively identified Bones 20 as Tammie Liles.

To confirm this match, the mother of Tammie submitted a DNA sampleto the University of North Texas. This confirmed that Bones 20 belonged to Tammie Lile.

Throughout the 1980s,GaryRidgway terrorized and evoked fear in the state of Washington. He was convicted of killing 49 women but he has confessed to 71 murders, but investigators believe that he killed more.

At his sentencing in 2003, he referenced the women who had not been found or identified by saying, "[to]the ladies who were not found, may they rest in peace. They need a better place than where I gave them.

Ridgway is currently serving life in prison at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla.

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New bill would give California parents more control over whether state can store their kid’s DNA – CBS News

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New bill would give California parents more control over whether state can store their kid's DNA  CBS News

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Lucas County Sheriff’s Office doing advanced testing on DNA found at site of 2011 Clarke and Straub murders – WTOL

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Lucas County Sheriff's Office doing advanced testing on DNA found at site of 2011 Clarke and Straub murders  WTOL

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Last known remains connected to the Green River Killer identified through DNA | WTGS – Fox28 Savannah

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Last known remains connected to the Green River Killer identified through DNA | WTGS - Fox28 Savannah

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5 Best Ancestry DNA Tests 2024 To Help You Learn More About Your Health – GLAMOUR UK

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5 Best Ancestry DNA Tests 2024 To Help You Learn More About Your Health  GLAMOUR UK

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11 Investigates: Lucas County Sheriff’s Office doing advanced testing on DNA found at site of 2011 Clarke and Straub murders – WTOL

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11 Investigates: Lucas County Sheriff's Office doing advanced testing on DNA found at site of 2011 Clarke and Straub murders  WTOL

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Researchers improve blood tests’ ability to detect and monitor cancer – MIT News

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Tumors constantly shed DNA from dying cells, which briefly circulates in the patients bloodstream before it is quickly broken down. Many companies have created blood tests that can pick out this tumor DNA, potentially helping doctors diagnose or monitor cancer or choose a treatment.

The amount of tumor DNA circulating at any given time, however, is extremely small, so it has been challenging to develop tests sensitive enough to pick up that tiny signal. A team of researchers from MIT and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard has now come up with a way to significantly boost that signal, by temporarily slowing the clearance of tumor DNA circulating in the bloodstream.

The researchers developed two different types of injectable molecules that they call priming agents, which can transiently interfere with the bodys ability to remove circulating tumor DNA from the bloodstream. In a study of mice, they showed that these agents could boost DNA levels enough that the percentage of detectable early-stage lung metastases leapt from less than 10 percent to above 75 percent.

This approach could enable not only earlier diagnosis of cancer, but also more sensitive detection of tumor mutations that could be used to guide treatment. It could also help improve detection of cancer recurrence.

You can give one of these agents an hour before the blood draw, and it makes things visible that previously wouldnt have been. The implication is that we should be able to give everybody whos doing liquid biopsies, for any purpose, more molecules to work with, says Sangeeta Bhatia, the John and Dorothy Wilson Professor of Health Sciences and Technology and of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT, and a member of MITs Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science.

Bhatia is one of the senior authors of the new study, along with J. Christopher Love, the Raymond A. and Helen E. St. Laurent Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT and a member of the Koch Institute and the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard and Viktor Adalsteinsson, director of the Gerstner Center for Cancer Diagnostics at the Broad Institute.

Carmen Martin-Alonso PhD 23, MIT and Broad Institute postdoc Shervin Tabrizi, and Broad Institute scientist Kan Xiong are the lead authors of the paper, which appears today in Science.

Better biopsies

Liquid biopsies, which enable detection of small quantities of DNA in blood samples, are now used in many cancer patients to identify mutations that could help guide treatment. With greater sensitivity, however, these tests could become useful for far more patients. Most efforts to improve the sensitivity of liquid biopsies have focused on developing new sequencing technologies to use after the blood is drawn.

While brainstorming ways to make liquid biopsies more informative, Bhatia, Love, Adalsteinsson, and their trainees came up with the idea of trying to increase the amount of DNA in a patients bloodstream before the sample is taken.

A tumor is always creating new cell-free DNA, and thats the signal that were attempting to detect in the blood draw. Existing liquid biopsy technologies, however, are limited by the amount of material you collect in the tube of blood, Love says. Where this work intercedes is thinking about how to inject something beforehand that would help boost or enhance the amount of signal that is available to collect in the same small sample.

The body uses two primary strategies to remove circulating DNA from the bloodstream. Enzymes called DNases circulate in the blood and break down DNA that they encounter, while immune cells known as macrophages take up cell-free DNA as blood is filtered through the liver.

The researchers decided to target each of these processes separately. To prevent DNases from breaking down DNA, they designed a monoclonal antibody that binds to circulating DNA and protects it from the enzymes.

Antibodies are well-established biopharmaceutical modalities, and theyre safe in a number of different disease contexts, including cancer and autoimmune treatments, Love says. The idea was, could we use this kind of antibody to help shield the DNA temporarily from degradation by the nucleases that are in circulation? And by doing so, we shift the balance to where the tumor is generating DNA slightly faster than is being degraded, increasing the concentration in a blood draw.

The other priming agent they developed is a nanoparticle designed to block macrophages from taking up cell-free DNA. These cells have a well-known tendency to eat up synthetic nanoparticles.

DNA is a biological nanoparticle, and it made sense that immune cells in the liver were probably taking this up just like they do synthetic nanoparticles. And if that were the case, which it turned out to be, then we could use a safe dummy nanoparticle to distract those immune cells and leave the circulating DNA alone so that it could be at a higher concentration, Bhatia says.

Earlier tumor detection

The researchers tested their priming agents in mice that received transplants of cancer cells that tend to form tumors in the lungs. Two weeks after the cells were transplanted, the researchers showed that these priming agents could boost the amount of circulating tumor DNA recovered in a blood sample by up to 60-fold.

Once the blood sample is taken, it can be run through the same kinds of sequencing tests now used on liquid biopsy samples. These tests can pick out tumor DNA, including specific sequences used to determine the type of tumor and potentially what kinds of treatments would work best.

Early detection of cancer is another promising application for these priming agents. The researchers found that when mice were given the nanoparticle priming agent before blood was drawn, it allowed them to detect circulating tumor DNA in blood of 75 percent of the mice with low cancer burden, while none were detectable without this boost.

One of the greatest hurdles for cancer liquid biopsy testing has been the scarcity of circulating tumor DNA in a blood sample, Adalsteinsson says. Its thus been encouraging to see the magnitude of the effect weve been able to achieve so far and to envision what impact this could have for patients.

After either of the priming agents are injected, it takes an hour or two for the DNA levels to increase in the bloodstream, and then they return to normal within about 24 hours.

The ability to get peak activity of these agents within a couple of hours, followed by their rapid clearance, means that someone could go into a doctors office, receive an agent like this, and then give their blood for the test itself, all within one visit, Love says. This feature bodes well for the potential to translate this concept into clinical use.

The researchers have launched a company called Amplifyer Bio that plans to further develop the technology, in hopes of advancing to clinical trials.

A tube of blood is a much more accessible diagnostic than colonoscopy screening or even mammography, Bhatia says. Ultimately, if these tools really are predictive, then we should be able to get many more patients into the system who could benefit from cancer interception or better therapy.

The research was funded by the Koch Institute Support (core) Grant from the National Cancer Institute, the Marble Center for Cancer Nanomedicine, the Gerstner Family Foundation, the Ludwig Center at MIT, the Koch Institute Frontier Research Program via the Casey and Family Foundation, and the Bridge Project, a partnership between the Koch Institute and the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center.

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Researchers improve blood tests' ability to detect and monitor cancer - MIT News

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DNA test approved for Duxbury’s Lindsay Clancy, who is accused of killing her 3 children – The Patriot Ledger

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DNA test approved for Duxbury's Lindsay Clancy, who is accused of killing her 3 children - The Patriot Ledger

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