SAN MATEO, Calif.

DNA testing has confirmed that a foot and part of a leg that washed up on a Pacifica beach in March is that of a San Bruno man who went missing around that time, San Mateo County Coroner Robert Foucrault said Thursday.

Joseph McHenry, 27, a former member of the U.S. Marine Corps, was last seen on March 2 when he told relatives he was going rock climbing and camping overnight at a secluded beach near Pacifica, Foucrault said.

He never returned, and his car was found parked in a residential area near Sharp Park Golf Course, according to San Bruno police.

A backpack belonging to McHenry was located a few days later on the beach near Mori Point, and on March 25, a human foot connected to a portion of a leg was found near the shoreline at Rockaway Beach.

The coroner's office collected the evidence, and DNA obtained from McHenry's mother has since confirmed that the body parts were McHenry's, Foucrault said.

No other evidence of the missing man has been found.

Police do not suspect foul play, San Bruno police Lt. Geoff Caldwell said.

Without more evidence, McHenry cannot be officially pronounced dead, Foucrault said.

The family is in the process of obtaining a court order that would officially close the case, he said.

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DNA matches foot to missing San Bruno man

CLAYTON St. Louis County police believe a serial rapist is targeting Asian women in northwestern St. Louis County and possibly elsewhere in the country.

Detectives found DNA evidence linking the rapes of two women in separate attacks to the same man, said county Police Chief Tim Fitch. But the culprit's identity has not been determined.

Fitch said it may be significant that one victim is of Chinese descent and the other Korean.

"This is the kind of stuff that will keep us awake at night: Some stranger out there attacking innocent victims," Fitch said. "That is why it's so important to let the public know to be on guard and let us know if you have information to help us catch the guy because we also know people like this just don't stop."

The first incident took place about 1:45 a.m. April 4, 2011, at the Beau Jardine apartment complex along the 10300 block of Sannois Drive. In that case, the victim, 27, said her attacker put a blanket over her head while she was asleep in her home and sexually assaulted her. There were no signs of forced entry to the second-floor apartment, but she told police she couldn't recall whether she had locked her door.

The other attack occurred Sept. 19 and involved a woman, 18, who said she was grabbed from behind while walking on a sidewalk near Fee Fee and Bennington roads in northwestern St. Louis County. The victim told police she was walking home from a friend's house when she was taken to a grassy area about 20 feet from the sidewalk.

The locations are within five miles of each other.

"Generally speaking, serial rapists do their homework on their victims before they attack," Fitch said. "We have every reason to believe this guy isn't just driving up the road and attacking the first woman he sees."

Fitch also said similar reports going back several years have surfaced in San Diego, New York and in Maryland involving a man targeting Asian women.

"We're trying to determine if this a transient person, who is moving from city to city for a job, and see if there are links in those other cases," he said. "That makes it even more difficult to catch someone when they're mobile like that. But it could turn out that he was born and raised here as well."

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DNA links two rapes in St. Louis County, may be more nationally

What would happen if everyone could do DNA analysis within minutes using a simple computerized box that accepted a person's cell samples on a swab and spit out the answer about a person's genetic identity automatically?

Though it sounds like the stuff of science fiction, that possibility is now within reach. And as the new capability of what's being called 'Rapid DNA' analysis takes off, law enforcement in police stations and the FBI could be using it to catch criminals without having to send DNA off to official DNA-testing labs as is done now. But it doesn't stop there. U.S. agencies could not only use this instant "DNA analysis in a box" to check the identity of someone wanting to come into the country, but easily check to see if two people who say they're related really are since DNA genetic information can provide that. And that's just what governments might do with it -- there's no reason that businesses and individuals couldn't easily be doing DNA analysis, too, in the years to come.

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"What science has given us is some very miraculous work in the DNA world," said Peter Verga, chief of staff for the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy at the U.S. Department of Defense, during his keynote at the Biometric Consortium Conference in Tampa recently.

After years of research encouraged by the FBI and DoD, 'Rapid DNA' analysis-in-a-box is here, proving a DNA profile can be produced automatically, with no need for professional lab training, in 90 minutes or less. Two companies, integenX and NetBio, are the manufacturers whose 'Rapid DNA' equipment is now under government evaluation at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the U.S. Army Criminal Investigative Laboratory. More companies, including Lockheed Martin, are expected to soon follow.

Verga noted it would theoretically be possible in the future to do a DNA profile on travelers coming into Dulles Airport, for example, for security purposes. But whatever ends up happening with the new power for instant DNA analysis, it must "adhere to the rule of law" and conform to the idea that one must "do good with biometrics and avoid evil," he added.

The 'Rapid DNA' analysis is only going to get more powerful in what it can do.

Richard Selden, CEO of NetBio, describes its ANDE System as a 'Rapid DNA' box that measures 26.6''-inches by 16.5-inches' x 23.1-inches' and can take an inserted cotton swab with cell samples from someone's cheek and produces a DNA profile in 83 minutes. Ruggedized for air, truck and hand-carry, it's "stable for at least six months without refrigeration," said Selden, speaking about it at the conference. It works in "an uncontrolled environment" with "no manual processing."

To match DNA, it can connect to a remote database or do the DNA matching in a local database onboard. The technology developed by NetBio is already being expanded into next-generation device that will accept very minute samples of DNA collected from cups or virtually anywhere for a DNA profile of the individual. The box is also being expanded to do "kinship analysis," Selden pointed out.

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Security: What if all law enforcement agencies could do instant DNA analysis?

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Fifty hours. Thats how long it now takes to decode and interpret a newborn babys genome an undertaking that used to take weeks, or even months. And those two days can mean the difference between life and death for a critically ill infant.

In a paper published in the journal Science Translational Medicine, researchers led by Stephen Kingsmore, director of the Center for Pediatric Genomic Medicine at Childrens Mercy Hospital, describe a new genetic test that can rapidly screen the DNA of babies in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) for about 3,500 diseases known to be linked to single-gene mutations. Of these, doctors can treat about 500.

Up to a third of babies admitted to the NICU have a genetic disease. But many newborns are not diagnosed properly and may therefore miss the opportunity for a potentially life-saving therapy. Many of the symptoms of such genetic diseases are both general and shared by many different conditions, which makes them difficult to diagnose; whats more, many of the genetic conditions in question are rare, so most physicians, even NICU specialists, may not be familiar them or unable to recognize their symptoms. Currently used genetic tests are also too expensive and time-consuming to be clinically useful; because the tests can take weeks, or sometimes months, most NICU babies will have either gone home or died by the time the results are ready.

(MORE: 23andMe Wants FDA Approval for Personal DNA Testing. What Can It Reveal?)

So Kingsmore and his colleagues collaborated with Illumina, a manufacturer of gene-sequencing machines, to shorten the time it takes to both decode an entire genome and generate a clinically useful analysis of that sequencing. Thanks to recent advances in the ability to break up and re-knit DNA, the company was able to sequence the 3 billion base pairs of the genome in just 27 hours down from weeks.

But decoding a genome is only half of the challenge. Words in a book dont make sense unless they are put together in a grammatically sensible way, and similarly, DNA is meaningless unless its analyzed in the context of genes, which in turn are connected to human functions or conditions. So for two years, Kingsmores team worked on special software designed to help doctors use genetic information to make accurate diagnoses and guide ill babies to the right treatment.

The software simplifies and standardizes the often complex process of diagnosis, by allowing doctors to click on the symptoms they see in newborns; the program then puts together a list of the genes that might be most likely to be at fault. Doctors can then compare these genetic suspects to the newborns sequenced genome to see if any of the same genes are mutated; if they are, they can pinpoint a diagnosis.

(MORE: Decoding Cancer: Scientists Release 520 Tumor Genomes from Pediatric Patients)

There is a phenomenal need for more accurate and faster diagnosis in the NICU, says Kingsmore, adding that this is a setting where we know that giving treatments is one of the most effective things we can do in medicine from the cost standpoint, since these patients have 65 to 70 years of life to live out.

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Good News for NICU Babies: Faster DNA Testing for More Accurate Diagnoses

STONY BROOK, NY--(Marketwire - Oct 4, 2012) - Applied DNA Sciences, Inc. ( OTCBB : APDN ) (Twitter: @APDN), a provider of DNA-based anti-counterfeiting technology and product authentication solutions, announced today it has been invited to present at the important SAE International 2012 Counterfeit Parts Avoidance Symposium. The Symposium will take place on Friday, Nov. 2, 2012 in Phoenix, Arizona. APDN will present an important white paper which Dr. James A. Hayward, APDN CEO and President, calls "a significant contribution to an urgent conversation and a call to action."

The speakers line-up for the Symposium includes thought leaders from throughout the industries impacted. SAE International (SAE) is a global association of more than 128,000 engineers and related technical experts in the aerospace, automotive and commercial-vehicle industries.

SAE has played a key role in the development of industry and government standards in the effort to stem counterfeits in electronics and aerospace. In 2009, the U.S. Department of Defense officially adopted SAE International's standard SAE AS5553-Counterfeit Electronic Parts; Avoidance, Detection, Mitigation, and Disposition.

SAE's G-19 Counterfeit Electronic Parts Committee continues to develop and refine the widely-followed anti-counterfeiting standards.

The Symposium takes place at a critical time in the effort against counterfeits. Electronics and aerospace continue to come to grips with new anti-counterfeiting requirements expressed in Section 818 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal 2012. Section 818 directs the Office of the Secretary of Defense to update the procurement rules and guidelines to account for the new anti-counterfeiting requirements. These updates may come in early October. The rules and guidelines are found in the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation (DFAR) Supplement to the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR).

APDN technology, which uses an engineered botanical DNA marker to assure authenticity of parts, is the centerpiece of a pilot program supported by the Defense Logistics Agency, managed by the LMI consultancy. As of August 7, 2012, the technology is required by DLA for defense contractors providing microcircuits in FSC 5962 to that Agency.

Janice Meraglia, APDN Vice President for Government and Military Programs, commented: "We are honored to present at an event which includes leaders who have made a real difference in the fight against counterfeits, going back many years. We believe our technology platform is poised to become a key tool in this effort, and something which will work well with and contribute to ongoing standards initiatives."

About Applied DNA Sciences

APDN is a provider of botanical-DNA based security and authentication solutions that can help protect products, brands and intellectual property of companies, governments and consumers from theft, counterfeiting, fraud and diversion. SigNature DNA and smartDNA, our principal anti-counterfeiting and product authentication solutions that essentially cannot be copied, provide a forensic chain of evidence and can be used to prosecute perpetrators.

The statements made by APDN may be forward-looking in nature. Forward-looking statements describe APDN's future plans, projections, strategies and expectations, and are based on assumptions and involve a number of risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond the control of APDN. Actual results could differ materially from those projected due to our short operating history, limited financial resources, limited market acceptance, market competition and various other factors detailed from time to time in APDN's SEC reports and filings, including our Annual Report on Form 10-K, filed on December 8, 2011 and our subsequent quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. APDN undertakes no obligation to update publicly any forward-looking statements to reflect new information, events or circumstances after the date hereof to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events.

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Applied DNA Sciences to Present at SAE Event