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DON #39;T FLOP - Rap Battle - Arsonal Vs DNA
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By: DontFlop

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DON'T FLOP - Rap Battle - Arsonal Vs DNA - Video

DNA so dangerous that it doesn't exist in nature has been given its first useful role keeping innocent people out of jail.

Several sequences of DNA not found in nature probably because they are incompatible with life were identified in 2007. Now it seems these so-called nullomers can be used to tag DNA samples taken from police suspects. If a suspect's DNA was tagged and then accidentally mixed with a crime-scene sample it would place them at the scene when perhaps they were not. But the tag's presence would prove that particular DNA sample came from sloppy lab or forensic practice and not the suspect.

Greg Hampikian of Boise State University in Idaho and his colleagues impregnated filter paper with various nullomers. The cards were then used to soak up and store DNA samples from a knife blade and a coffee cup lid.

Sure enough, even when Hampikian diluted the DNA samples 100,000 times, the nullomers were still identifiable, and didn't interfere with analysis of the original DNA profile (Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine, doi.org/mcf).

This article appeared in print under the headline "Killer DNA protects the innocent"

Correction: When this article was first published, the second paragraph stated that nullomers were not found in humans. This has now been extended to all of nature.

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Lethal DNA tags could keep innocent people out of jail

Warwick Police Department via AP

This 2007 booking photo released by Warwick, R.I., police shows Katherine Russell, arrested on shoplifting charges there. Charges were later dismissed. Russell is the widow of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, a suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings.

By Pete Williams and Erin McClam, NBC News

DNA found on a fragment of one of the Boston Marathon bombs does not match DNA taken earlier this week from Katherine Russell, the widow of the dead suspect in the attack, but she remains under scrutiny, investigators told NBC News.

Investigators said they still have many questions for Russell because they believe the bombs were assembled at the home she shared with her husband, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was killed in a firefight with suburban Boston police April 19.

Russell converted to Islam in 2009, after meeting Tsarnaev in a nightclub, and married him in 2010. She said through her lawyer that his alleged involvement in the attack came as an absolute shock.

Investigators said earlier this week that a piece of one of the pressure-cooker bombs set off by the brothers had a womans DNA on it, and that they wanted to determine who else might have handled the bombs.

Federal agents with bomb-sniffing dogs searched in Dartmouth, Mass., on Friday after people living there said they heard loud booms a month ago. The surviving suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, was a student at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth.

John Sladewski / The Standard-Times via AP

Massachusetts State Police walk out of the woods of The Smith Neck Farm in Dartmouth, Mass., on Friday.

Read more here:
Bomb DNA not a match for suspect's widow