Monthly Archives: March 2020

Roland T. Brown found out when he was a teen that he had been adopted as a baby, but he never thought much about it. He was too busy living the life laid before him. Never asked a lot of questions. Never really thought about finding his birth mother.

I never worried about it, said Brown, 80, as we sat at his kitchen table in his North Chesterfield home.

In the summer of 2017, his son and daughter-in-law were finding out more about their family trees, so they submitted DNA tests through Ancestry.com. Brown was intrigued by what they were doing, so they gave him a DNA kit, too. All he was interested in, though, was learning more about his ethnicity.

He learned a whole lot more.

Or, as his daughter-in-law, Joyce Brown, put it, He found a family.

Long story short, Roland Brown found two half sisters and a half brother, as well as a whole world of cousins, nieces and nephews. How it all came together over the past 25 years is quite a story Browns DNA test, Ancestry.com and a long-ago baby picture were the key ingredients but there also is this:

Brown, who was raised an only child and whose wife, Ruth, died in 2005, is completely delighted by discovering a new branch on his family tree and learning about his mother, who died more than 20 years ago. Until a little over two years ago, Brown said he never thought I had a single living relative on his side of the family.

Its all great, he said. Im having a good time.

The advent of DNA analysis and the easy accessibility through services such as Ancestry.com has certainly changed the equation in figuring out whos related to whom, and they certainly paved the way for Brown to be found by his siblings. But there was much more at play.

Brown grew up on Floyd Avenue in Richmonds Fan District. He learned at age 16 that his parents, Gussie and Kirk Brown, a plumber who died when Brown was a teen, had raised him since he was an infant after his young birth mother had left him there.

The birth mother had lived less than two blocks away at a boardinghouse run by her mother, and the woman who would become his adoptive mother had babysat him until the birth mother asked her to take care of her child on a permanent basis.

His adoptive mother offered precious little information about his birth mother, so there was no trail to follow. Brown wasnt much interested anyway. At the time, he was much more focused on cars and girls and sports, and it didnt occur to me to try to find my birth mother.

I thought I had a kind of normal life, said Brown, a 1958 graduate of Thomas Jefferson High.

Brown went on to marry, and he and Ruth raised a daughter and two sons. Ruths extended family became his own. He worked at DuPont for 35 years, retiring as a data center manager in 2001. In retirement, he went into business for himself as an inspector of footings and foundations for new construction. He also volunteered as a motorist assistant in Chesterfield County for 15 years.

As far as his biological family connections, he didnt know what he didnt know and thats the way it was, but he was always curious about his ethnicity, figuring he might have Spanish or Mexican blood in him. The opportunity to do a DNA test might answer that question.

He had no idea that a North Carolina woman had been looking for him for more than 20 years.

In 1995, Judy Florens adoptive mother watched an episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show that featured an organization that searched for birth mothers of adopted children. Her mother told Floren, who was 53 at the time and living near Asheville, N.C., that she would pay for the service if she wanted to look for her birth mother.

Floren was interested, and the search didnt take long, leading to a woman in Florida.

Floren was unable to contact the woman because, as it turned out, she was recuperating from a stroke at the home of her daughter. (She also had a son from her marriage, later in her life, to a career Navy man.) Floren reached the daughter, Joyce Knowles, and eventually went for a visit.

It was shocking in the beginning, Knowles said in a phone interview from her home near Green Cove Springs, Fla., but once it became clear through the documents and information Floren had that it was true, Knowles embraced the situation. She had always wanted a sister, she said, particularly in the role of her mothers caretaker and now she had one.

The more the merrier, she said.

However, her mother, Alice Elise, was ailing and experiencing memory issues, so Knowles still doesnt know if she understood exactly who Floren was, but she loved Judy immediately.

Knowles also said her heart hurt trying to imagine what it must have been like for her mother who grew up in an orphanage in North Carolina after her father died to have been young, pregnant and unmarried in the 1940s and facing such a wrenching decision about the future of her child.

During the course of all this, Knowles contacted one of her moms sisters, who said, yes, she remembered there had been a baby who had been adopted, but she thought it was a boy. Knowles thought her aunt was confused, and her mother never said.

Then, when her mother died two years later, Floren and Knowles were going through some of their mothers things. There, in a box of photographs, they came across a picture of a baby. It appeared to be a studio shot. On the back of the photo was written a name: Roland.

Roland Brown got up from the kitchen table, walked into the other room and returned holding a framed photograph he had taken off the wall.

It was a baby picture of himself that his adoptive mother had given him. It is the same photo, it turns out, that Floren and Knowles found in the box of photos that had belonged to their mother.

I dont know if theres Roland written on the back of this one because Ive never taken the back off, he said. Its an old frame.

Brown always thought it was a picture that his adoptive mother had arranged to be made. Now, he believes his birth mother had it made, gave one copy to Gussie Brown and kept one for herself the one that for more than two decades had been sitting on Judy Florens dresser.

After finding the photograph among her birth mothers things and upon hearing what her birth mothers sister had said about a baby boy, she was convinced she had a brother somewhere. She and her husband, Roger, searched for a long time for Roland but had no last name and ran into nothing but dead-ends.

A breakthrough finally came in December 2017 a few months after Rolands DNA results showed his ancestors likely came from, not Spain or Mexico, but the United Kingdom, northwestern Europe and Norway.

That month, one of Judy and Rogers daughters had her DNA analyzed on Ancestry.com. When her results were posted, showing a list of blood relatives, there was a name she didnt recognize: Roland Brown. She called and asked her parents, Arent you looking for a Roland?

They were. Now they had a last name, and they finally knew where to look.

Judy Floren began calling every Roland Brown and R. Brown she could find in the Richmond directory. When our Roland Brown received a voicemail from Floren, he thought it was some sort of prank or scam. He didnt return the call. Floren called back later and, as Brown recalls, she said, Roland: I really need to talk to you. Weve got the same mother.

That got my attention, he said with a laugh, so he called her back. She started telling me things, and it all added up.

Said Floren, I never dreamed in a million years that wed find Roland.

Brown has visited the Florens in Asheville, and he and the Florens have traveled to Florida to meet their siblings, Joyce and Michael. Everyone gets along great.

Oh, yes, said Roger Floren. The reunions weve had have been great times.

Said Knowles, I immediately bonded with Judy and Roland. I tell my friends, its weird that its not weird. Its like Ive always known them.

Its been a difficult year for Brown. He lost the youngest of his two sons in the fall, and soon after a niece he was particularly close to died. Amid the sadness, though, has been the joy of this new branch of his family.

For his 80th birthday in February, the Florens drove up for a surprise party. Knowles sent him a birthday card and an anniversary card marking one year since they learned about each other.

Brown considers this all just bonus stuff at this stage of his life.

Were all real happy about it. Everybodys so nice, and we just love each other, he said, before adding with a laugh, just a shame I had to be so old before I found out everything.

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Lohmann: A DNA test, an old photograph and at long last a new branch on the family tree - Richmond.com

You may not be one of the more than 30 million people who have spat into a tube and shipped off their saliva or a cheek swabusing one of those at-home DNA testing kits sold by companies such as 23andMe and Ancestry, but soon that wont matter.

We are moving towards a time when the decision to know or ignore your genetic data will no longer be yours alone, according to Libby Copeland, author of The Lost Family: How DNA Testing Is Upending Who We Are.

You dont have the choice anymore increasingly, of whether or not you opt in or not, explained Copeland. You are opted in by dint of the fact that people have made this decision for you. They bought [the kit] as a Christmas gift for their sister, and their sister tested. And that sister is your aunt, and thats it.

Related:Immigration expert: TrumpDNAcollection plan is 'waste of time'

We are only just beginning to grapple with the consequences of the commercialization of our genes through home genetic testing. There was an inkling of where things were headed back in the spring of 2018 when authorities in Sacramento County announced that they had arrested Joseph James DeAngelo, the man they believed to be the infamous Golden State Killer. The police were able to track down DeAngelo and identify him because of DNA data uploaded to a free online genealogy service by one of his distant relatives.

Since DeAngelos arrest, investigators around the country have used similar techniques to solve more cold cases techniques that have privacy experts worried. There is a lot that you can find out about a person from their genetic information. Leading genetic testing companies do have measures in place to protect their users identities, but there are many open questions about who will own, have access to, or be able to control our genetic data in the years to come, according to Copeland. Could that genetic information eventually be shared or sold to a third party, or could it be hacked and made public?

Related:ADNAtest connected two distant cousins and filled out a family history that slavery erased

There are also implications for the world of private health insurance because DNA results can include sensitive details about potential medical risks. Copeland said it is not difficult to imagine a time when your health insurer finds out that you or a family member has obtained the results of a home genetic test and demands that you share that information with them.

If you dont give them [it], that could be considered fraud. And if you do give them [it], that could potentially impact certain types of insurance, she explained. It hasnt happened yet, but its something that people worry about.

There is federal legislation in place to protect people against genetic discrimination, but it has some loopholes, which is a concern for legal and privacy scholars, according to Copeland.

The Pentagon is worried too. Last year it warned service members about the risks of using commercial genetic tests, including potentially negative consequences for their careers and the security of the military.

Despite the objections of privacy experts, nobody seems to be in a hurry to regulate the wild west of commercial genetic testing at either the state or federal level, and customers are not overly concerned either, said Copeland.

The average consumer doesnt seem to be clamoring to be finding out less or to be more protected from their information, she explained.

It is early days though and, since it is not unusual for laws to lag behind advances in technology, nobody quite knows what the future might hold when it comes to big data and the unanticipated consequences of genetic genealogy.

Elizabeth Ross is senior producer at Innovation Hub. You can follow her on Twitter: @eross6

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Home DNA tests reveal more than we bargained for - PRI

The blood in the freshly fallen snow led detectives to the mutilated body of Linda Tschari.

It was Feb. 8, 1978 and Buffalo was in the grips of a blizzard.

Now, 42 years later, cold case cops say theyve busted 19-year-old Tscharis killer.

The young woman had been stabbed multiple times in various parts of her body. She was found by her brother after the family were unable to contact her and became worried.

Tschari had lived in a cottage behind the larger home where her mother, father and brother resided.

Cops theorized she had been surprised by the killer and butchered in her bed. The only thing detectives had to go on was a witness description of her attacker, who fled in a car into the snowy night.

And the blood in the alley? It likely belonged to the murderer.

John M. Sauberan, 60, has been charged with second-degree murder in the 1978 slaying of a Buffalo woman. BUFFALO POLICE

DNA has a long memory and it paid dividends with the arrest of John M. Sauberan, who is now charged with second-degree murder. Police say his DNA matched that left at the crime scene long ago.

The 60-year-olds DNA was in the national database as a result of a 2008 Oregon arrest, Erie County District Attorney John J. Flynn told reporters.

Cops described Sauberan as a drifter who moved frequently around the U.S., including Georgia and Florida.

But Flynn told The Buffalo News that Sauberan was not an ex-boyfriend or even an acquaintance of Tschari.

Right now, I have no reason to believe that he knew her at all, he said.

Conveniently, Sauberan had recently moved back to Buffalo. He has pleaded not guilty.

Detectives in the late 70s could not have imagined what the future would hold in the world of forensics and DNA, Buffalo Police Chief of Detectives Dennis J. Richards said.

But with a great amount of persistence from an awful lot of people, an arrest has been made and the next chapter begins in the prosecution of the person we believe responsible for Linda Tscharis death.

bhunter@postmedia.com

@HunterTOSun

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DNA leads to arrest in 1978 butchering of Buffalo woman - Toronto Sun

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Examine Global DNA Next Generation Sequencing Market forecast to 2026 - WhaTech Technology and Markets News

A bill in the Florida Legislature that would have eased the requirements for inmates seeking DNA testing failed this past week, shutting out Tommy Zeigler and inmates like him from testing their evidence with modern forensic methods.

Zeigler has been on death row for 44 years for the murders of his wife, in-laws and another man at his familys furniture store in Winter Garden on Christmas Eve 1975. He was shot in the stomach that day and has always maintained he and his family were victims of a robbery attempt.

The bill, sponsored by Tampa Rep. Jamie Grant, the Republican chairman of the House Criminal Justice Subcommittee, would have likely allowed Zeigler to test the corduroy shirt and plaid pants he wore on the day of the crime for the victims blood. It would have enabled him, for the first time, to test their fingernail clippings.

Grant, who researched how other states handle DNA testing, ushered the bill through his subcommittee, the Appropriations Committee and the Judiciary Committee -- unanimously. Even the full House approved it, 114 to 0, last week.

But the bill died when the Senate failed to pick it up. Later, it was added to another criminal justice reform bill, which also failed as the House and Senate haggled over the details.

Ill keep working on it until its done, Grant said Monday. I think this is an example that sometimes the process can be really ugly.

Grants bill would have changed Florida statute, which now says inmates must be exonerated by forensic testing, such as a DNA test that might identify the true rapist. The bill would have allowed for forensic testing even if it would just provide evidence in a case or point to an accomplice.

David Michaeli, one of Zeiglers New York attorneys, said he was encouraged by the fact that House Bill 7077 passed one chamber of Floridas Legislature unanimously.

How many bills accomplish that? he said. It tells us something about the common sense wisdom of testing and the fact that it is a nonpartisan issue.

He said they would not give up fighting for the testing.

Inmates who have been in prison the longest struggle the most for permission to conduct DNA testing, even those who offer to pay for it. Zeiglers requests have been rejected six times.

I think the Florida experience is similar to the experience in other states, said Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington D.C. What were seeing in state after state is that the standard for obtaining (DNA testing) is so high, and the rules are so stringent, that folks are being executed without the testing being done.

In Georgia, he said, a man was executed last November for shooting a convenience store clerk in 1994 -- without obtaining forensic analysis. In January, the City Council in Jacksonville, Ark. agreed to turn over evidence in a 1993 murder to the family of a man executed in 2017. Courts also had turned down his request for DNA testing.

The Tampa Bay Times reviewed the cases of 46 men on Floridas death row who asked for permission to conduct DNA testing and found that judges turned down 38 of them at least once. Nineteen were denied all DNA testing, including eight who were later executed.

That analysis was featured in a multipart series and podcast called Blood and Truth.

Were running out of time with Tommy, theres no doubt about it, said Terry Hadley, one of his original attorneys.

Zeiglers lawyers say the forensic tests could prove the 74-year-old innocent and point to another perpetrator. They say that even the states DNA expert said the killers clothes should have blood evidence from the victims, particularly those slain in a gruesome fashion or at close range. If Zeigler has none of the victims blood on his clothes, the lawyers argued in a memo to the state, then he did not kill them.

But last year, State Attorney Aramis Ayala turned down Zeiglers latest bid even though her conviction integrity unit recommended the testing. She opposed it, she said, because the DNA testing would not outright exonerate Zeigler.

Contact Leonora LaPeter Anton at llapeter@tampabay.com Follow @WriterLeonora.

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Legislature fails to support DNA testing that would have helped inmates like Tommy Zeigler - Tampa Bay Times

There is no treatment for inherited degenerative disorders like Friedreich's ataxia, so care focuses on relieving symptoms. With $45 million and technology out of the University of Wisconsin, Design Therapeutics is trying to change that.

The company uncloaked Friday with $45 million in series A funding to push a treatment for Friedreich's ataxia into the clinic. It will also advance its discovery-stage programs in other degenerative disorders such as Fragile X syndrome and myotonic dystrophy.

San Diego-based Design Therapeutics is taking aim at nucleotide repeat disorders, where a mutation increases the number of times a DNA sequence is repeated. These mutations cause disease in multiple waysthe affected gene may produce an abnormal protein, or it may not produce enough of a required protein, as is the case with Friedreich's ataxia.

RELATED: Triplet Therapeutics launches with $59M, Nessan Bermingham at the wheel

Most patients with Friedreich's ataxia have an expanded GAA repeat in their FXN gene that blocks transcription, resulting in limited production of the frataxin protein. Designs lead program aims to unblock transcription. The series A funding, from SR One, Cormorant Asset Management, Quan Capital and West River Group, will bankroll IND-enabling studies for the program.

Significant industry advancements have led to the understanding of root causes of multiple nucleotide repeat disorders, however, there remain few to no therapeutic options that slow the progression or reverse the course of disease, said Pratik Shah, Ph.D., Design co-founder and executive chairman, in a statement. Our company was founded with a goal of designing a new class of small molecule therapies that address the core etiology of diseases to deliver a biological effect typically only seen with complex molecules.

Triplet Therapeutics, which launched in December, is taking a different tack. Its looking at a specific subset of repeat expansion disorders called triplet repeat disorders, so called because they result from repeats of three nucleotide bases, or letters. Rather than developing drugs on a disease-by-disease basis, it is doing so on a tissue-by-tissue basis, so it could potentially treat multiple diseases with the same drug.

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Design Therapeutics debuts with $45M to tackle degenerative disorders - FierceBiotech

Professor Joel Mackay.

Professor Mackay said: This protein effectively remodels our DNA to allow access to the information that determines the fate of a cell and its ability to respond to signals from the outside. It is a critical protein for almost all the work that cells do, including cell division and DNA repair.

Understanding this process will be critical in the long term for developing treatments for neurodevelopmental disorders and some cancers.

These illnesses are in part triggered by defects in the remodelling of the DNA that is driven by this process, Professor Mackay said.

The protein CHD4 and its close partners are emerging as important risk factors inpolygenic neurodevelopmental disorders, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, as well as inrare monogenic disorders, such as GAND, which causes severe mental disability, Professor Mackay said.

He said that mutations in the CHD4 protein that impair its function are also associated with endometrial carcinoma.

The research was in collaboration with scientists at the University of Wollongong and the Australian National University.

The work was funded by the following grants from the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia: APP1012161, APP1063301, APP1126357 and a fellowship from the same organisation to Professor Joel Mackay (APP1058916). Antoine van Oijen is an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow.

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DNA riddle: how cells access data from 'genetic cotton reels' - News - The University of Sydney

After a 10-day break, WAs trial of the century resumed - with strict and widespread cleaning and social distancing measures to ensure this mammoth trial can continue.

Compared to previously in the trial - when the public gallery was packed to the point a separate room was set aside for overflow - one person from the public was in court.

And what they heard was the beginning of the fibre evidence, which focussed on Jane Rimmers hair mass.

For full coverage of WA's trial of the century, head to TheWest.com.au

Fibres are critical to the prosecution to link Ciara Glennons fingernails - which they say contained Bradley Edwards DNA - to Jane Rimmer and the Karrakatta rape victim.

Without any DNA evidence linking Jane to the accused, or any DNA evidence at all, the prosecution say 22 critical fibres were found in Janes hair, which came from specially made Telstra pants that Bradley Edwards would have worn in the mid 90s.

They say those fibres got there through Bradley Edwards taking Jane in his car, and getting close enough to her when he was killing her.

The defence, however say contamination is also the way those fibres got into Janes hair mass.

If youre just joining the trial now, you can start from season 2, episode 1, or our special two-part catch up, called JUMP IN NOW: Claremont the Trial Catch Up Part 1 and 2.

If you have any questions about the trial for any of the guests, send them in to claremontpodcast@wanews.com.au

Join Natalie Bonjolo, Tim Clarke and Forensic expert Brendan Chapman as they discuss day 60.

For more information on WA's trial of the century, head to TheWest.com.au

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Claremont serial killings trial podcast: Unlike DNA, Fibres CAN Fly Around the Room - PerthNow

Indian scientists are building a DNA database for red panda populations in the country, even as a report warns of serious threats to the bushy-tailed and chestnut-furred animals. The main threats are from habitat degradation, amid low levels of crime related to the species in India.

According to Zoological Survey of India scientist Mukesh Thakur, the reference DNA database for existing populations of red pandas will aid conservation efforts and come in handy to combat illegal wildlife trade by helping law enforcement officials assign the seizure (of illegal wildlife trade derivatives) to the source of origin, which would aid prosecution.

Thakur has also acknowledged and accepted the recent genetic evidence that red pandas are actually two separate species Chinese (Ailurus styani) and Himalayan red panda (Ailurus fulgens).

The two species are distributed in the eastern and north-eastern Himalayan subalpine conifer forests and the eastern Himalayan broadleaf forests, which geographically fall in China, India, Nepal, Bhutan, and northern Myanmar.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature categorises red panda as endangered because its population has plausibly declined by 50 percent over the last three generations (estimated at 18 years) and this decline is projected to continue, and probably intensify, in the next three generations.

Experts estimate that around 14,50015,000 individual red pandas remain worldwide. The main reasons for the population decline are habitat loss and degradation in almost all the range countries.

In India, the animal is distributed in three states only: West Bengal (Darjeeling district only), Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh, Thakur said, noting there is no recent report of red panda presence from the Meghalaya Plateau. The animal is protected under Schedule 1 of the Wildlife Protection Act 1972 in India, which means it is accorded the same protection as tigers.

Adding to conservation efforts, Thakur is leading the study of fine-scale landscape genetics of red panda covering the eastern Himalayas and building a reference DNA database to help in the identification of confiscated cases, under an ongoing five-year project of the government of Indias Department of Science and Technology INSPIRE Faculty scheme.

We are collecting poop of red pandas from all across the distribution in the eastern Himalayas to build a DNA database and we have already done it from the wild populations in Kangchenjunga landscape, covering North Bengal and Sikkim. We collected 250 plus faecal samples and genetically identified 24 unique individuals in the landscape in India, Thakur of Centre for DNA Taxonomy and coordinator Centre for Forensic Sciences, Zoological Survey of India, told Mongabay-India.

Now in the second phase, we are focussing on red panda populations in Arunachal Pradesh. So far about 50 faecal samples have been collected from various parts of Arunachal Pradesh and my students, Hiren and Supriyo are still in the field for sample collection and conducting surveys. I hope by next year we will have the complete picture of red panda populations in India, he said.

The 25,085 square km Kangchenjunga landscape (KL), encompassing India, Nepal and Bhutan, ranges in elevation from 40 metres to 8,586 metres and is home to more than seven million people, while hosting more than 4,500 species of plants and at least 169 mammal and 618 bird species.

The landscape supports the transboundary population of red pandas in India, Nepal, and Bhutan. To learn more about how populations are faring in the India part of the landscape, the scientists undertook distribution modelling and fine-scale landscape genetics. They discovered that due to habitat fragmentation and rapid changes in the land use patterns, the red panda populations exist in a series of localised, small, imperfectly connected populations.

Our investigations suggest that about 1309.54 square km area is suitable for red pandas in the Indian part of the Kangchenjunga landscape, of which 62.21 percent area falls under the protected area network, Thakur said, adding that there is no India-level exact estimate of the red panda populations.

The National Studbook on the red panda (April 2018) states that the current captive population of red pandas in India includes 24 individuals in three zoos. The population retains a limited amount of genetic diversity and includes closely related individuals.

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Indian scientists building DNA database to protect the elusive red panda - Mongabay-India