Monthly Archives: September 2021

Anne Wojcicki is sitting on a treasure trove of genetic data. The co-founder and chief executive of 23andMe has led the genetic testing company through 14 years in which it has collected data from millions of customers through their at-home DNA spit test kits. In 2018, the company announced a collaboration with GlaxoSmithKline to use this anonymized, aggregated data to develop new pharmaceutical drugs and attracted a $300 million investment from the pharmaceutical giant. And in June, when Wojcicki took the company public, it was valued at $3.5 billion. In some ways, its a standard Silicon Valley play: Lure customers in with the promise of democratizing information before quickly moving to monetize that information. But what are the implications when the information at stake is your DNA?

[You can listen to this episode of Sway on Apple, Spotify, Google or wherever you get your podcasts.]

In this conversation, Kara presses Wojcicki on the ethical, privacy and security questions intertwined with the 23andMe business model. They discuss what the rise of genetic testing might mean for todays 2-year-olds and how the United States is faring in a genetic information race with China. And they dig into the ongoing Theranos trial specifically, whether the case against Elizabeth Holmes will rein in a Silicon Valley health tech sector that, in the past, has run a little wild.

(A full transcript of the episode will be available midday on the Times website.)

Thoughts? Email us at sway@nytimes.com.

Sway is produced by Nayeema Raza, Blakeney Schick, Matt Kwong, Daphne Chen and Caitlin OKeefe, and edited by Nayeema Raza; fact-checking by Kate Sinclair; music and sound design by Isaac Jones; mixing by Carole Sabouraud and Sonia Herrero; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Liriel Higa.

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Opinion | What Is 23andMe Doing With Your DNA? - The New York Times

One cold case solved, as anotherbecomes more mysterious.

A rare DNA match last monthidentifiedremainsfound in Florida more than 40 years ago. The remains were those of James Sanders from Tennessee. A man last seen by relatives in 1978.

But for years, there were questions of whether Sanders remains belonged to a John Doe found burning at a Middle Tennessee campground in La Vergne in 1978.

[After a]press release in 2014, we received a phone call. A man thinking that the John Doe in our casemaybe hisbrother, saidRutherford County Sheriffs OfficeDetective Richard Brinkley,whois investigating the case.

A DNA test showed John Does remains were not Sanders. Something hard to believe for both family and detectives until recently.

Subsequently, years later, Florida isworkinga John Doe homicide case, and they submit some items for testing to get DNA results. And those resultsidentifiedJames Sanders,Brinkley said.

Begging the question: who was the man discovered so brutally murdered in La Vergne?

The John Doe in our case was found at Pool Knobs Campground in August of 1978.Hes the victim of a homicide. Hehadbeen shot, was set on fire,and left there,Brinkley said.

Forty-three years later,detectives are making yet another attempt to identify him.

We are working with a company calledOthramout of Texas thats working on some DNA for us, Brinkley said. They have extracted DNA and were able to develop a profile and are now working to find potential family members.

With how far DNA technology has come along with the other cold case recently solved, Detective Brinkley has a renewed hopeingetting justice for John Doe and reuniting him with his loved ones.

Theres no statute of limitations on a homicide, and we work them until weve exhausted everything. And this ones not solved. But, were going to keep pushing forward, he said.

The Rutherford County Sheriffs Office stressed they are looking for anyonewho couldpossibly berelated to this John Doe. Anyone who may have a relative who went missing around thattime is asked to contactBrinkley at rbrinkley@rcsotn.orgor at 615-904-3045.

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Rutherford County detectives run new DNA test to find family of man set on fire in La Vergne - WKRN News 2

VISTA, Calif. (KGTV) -- Carrie Newton said her childhood was filled with joy, and happiness, alongside her mom, stepdad, and siblings.

"I thought my mom's first husband was my dad, and I had never met him because I was raised by my stepdad," Newton, now 52 years old, remembered.

Thoughts of tracking down her biological father rarely entered her mind until she was older. It wasn't until three years ago that she hopped on the trend of submitting a DNA heritage test.

"I just wanted to find out where I was from geographically, Newton said.

Little did she know that DNA kit would change her life forever.

"I kept getting emails saying, 'You have a fifth cousin'. I didn't care about that. Then about a year later, I checked my email, and it said, 'You have a half-sister and a niece, said Newton.

It turns out that half-sister got a similar notification around the same time because she took the same DNA heritage kit. The two eventually came into contact, leading Newton to her biological father, Mario Gonzales.

"My daughter from my previous marriage called me and goes, 'Dad, did you date a girl by the name of Kay when you 18?' And it was complete silence," said Gonzales.

He was shocked because, at 18, he dated Newtons mother until she moved back to Seattle, and he'd never hear from her again.

"My daughter gave me her number, and I immediately called her and said, 'Honey, this is your dad,' and she started crying, she made me cry, Gonzales said.

Gonzales said he never knew Newtons mother was pregnant. Sadly, in 2004 Kay lost her battle with cancer, taking that secret with her.

Finally, after a long-awaited year amid COVID-19, the duo met at San Diego International Airport.

As Newton came down the escalator, years of distance evaporated in mere moments as she and Gonzales embraced each other with tears of joy.

The cost of these DNA kits unearthing a priceless connection.

"It was like we were two peas in a pod. Every time we talked, it's like we get each other," Newton said.

This story was first reported by Vanessa Paz on 10news.com.

Excerpt from:
DNA kit links father and daughter after 52 years - fox13now.com

Gwinnett County Police told Janis Adams that the unidentified remains of a woman murdered decades ago belong to her missing mother, Marlene Standridge.

GWINNETT COUNTY, Ga. The mystery of a missing mother of two young children has just been solved, after decades of heartache.

But her now-grown daughter, Janis Adams, is at peace after finding out.

Gwinnett County Police just matched Adams DNA with the DNA of unidentified human remains found in some woods nearly 40 years ago.

The remains are those of her mother, Marlene Standridge.

Police believe Standridge had been murdered soon after she disappeared, when her daughter was just three years old.

Standridge disappeared from Piedmont Park in Atlanta, in 1973.

Standridge was at the park with her 6-year-old son, and her 3-year-old daughter-- Janis.

The children suddenly couldnt find her.

Its been a mystery, Adams told 11Alive Thursday. Its just been a mystery that none of us have been able to figure out. My brother and I were always told that our mother kind of just abandoned us at Piedmont Park, and we never knew what happened to her.

Janis Adams never believed her mother would abandon them. She tried everything over the years to find her.

A couple of years ago, she submitted her DNA to a data base, GEDmatch.

Last month, Gwinnett County Police Homicide Detective Brian Dorminy called her in, and told her that by coincidence this past spring, while investigating a cold-case homicide, he had submitted human remains to a DNA lab - the unidentified remains of a woman found, in December, 1982, in some woods near Yellow River Park.

Detective Dorminy submitted the remains to Othram Labs, which specializes in using trace amounts of degraded forensic evidence to make identification.

The labs website provides case histories of cold cases that were solved through its DNA testing methods.

Police said, back in 1982, that theyd recovered from some woods off of Deshong Drive near Yellow River Park, a skull, a bone from an upper arm, bone fragments, clothing including shoes, and also a nylon rope and other evidence. Police said then that the remains were of a woman who had been tied, murdered, and left there, unburied, six to 10 years earlier.

The rope appeared to have been used to bind a victim, to either tie the victims arms behind her, or legs together, police wrote in their report then.

The report also said that it did not appear that any effort was made to bury the corpse that had apparently been left where it was lying.

Since that discovery, police had no success identifying the remains, not knowing that Janis Adams was spending her life trying to discover what had happened to her mom.

Adams said she learned that her father never filed a missing person report. So, when police found the remains, years after her mother's disappearance, there was no way for detectives to cross-check the discovery with files of missing people.

Why didnt her father file a missing person report?

That is the million dollar question, Adams said. Why wasnt anyone wondering, 'okay - where is this mother at?' I asked him, and he just said, honestly, I thought shed left with someone else. So why am I going to bother looking for her? And Im just, like, that is not a good answer. You had two children, did you never wonder for once that we would want to know, one day, what happened to her? Whenever we would ask him the question, he would just kind of shut down.

Adams said she kept trying to talk with her father about her mother, right up until his death a couple of years ago.

Then, this month, the final DNA tests came back, confirming a match between the remains found in 1982, and Adams DNA--which had popped up in a search, after the lab established the DNA of the remains. The woman was Marlene Standridge, Janis Adams mother.

Adams said Thursday that police told her that her mother had probably been abducted miles away at Piedmont Park, then taken to the Gwinnett County woods and killed.

A possible suspect, police told her, is the same man police suspected at the time the remains were found--a man who was later convicted of murdering another woman at about the same time her mother was killed.

Its just a really wild story to be told, basically, that you were abandoned your whole life, but then find out that she probably was protecting us from this guy who ended up taking her, Adams said.

It is a relief, she said, learning, along with her family now, how much her mother loved her and her brother.

And Ive prayed about it, and, I mean, thank God, I finally got the answers that I needed," describing her childhood with her father as difficult, as she grew and tried to find answers about her mom, and tried to remain positive despite it all.

"You can make anything of your life," she said. "It doesnt matter the circumstances that you were brought up in. What matters is your reaction to those circumstances."

She and her brother want to have a funeral for their mom.

Not a sad moment, Adams said. Maybe like, just something joyful for her. I think she deserves that after all these years.

Adams praised Det. Dorminy and the Gwinnett County Police for never giving up on the case.

It was a blessing finding out, she said. I mean, its awful that she was murdered, but Im glad that we have that closure. Im still processing it all. Im glad that they have this technology, and hopefully other people will be able to use this technology and get the closure that they need."

Gwinnett County Police continue to investigate the homicide. They are asking anyone who might know anything to contact them at 770-513-5300. Or they can submit anonymous tips to Crime Stoppers and qualify for a possible reward: 404-577-TIPS (404-577-8477) stopcrimeATL.com.

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She was told her mother abandoned her at Piedmont Park; DNA just helped her learn the real story - 11Alive.com WXIA

ALBANY Back in April, a local man made off with more than $4,000 in jewelry he allegedly stole from a downtown Albany store.

The evidence was right there for all to see. The suspect, who lives in Albany County and has previous arrests, was filmed by a security camera reaching over the counter at Truman Jewelers on North Pearl Street and taking items out of the glass casewhile a store employee was in the back.

A month later, Albany police nabbed the suspect, whose identity is being withheld by the Times Union so as not to unfairly influence his pending criminal case.

But it was not just the video that led to the suspect being arrested and charged with larceny. It was also synthetic DNA that helped police nab him.

Synthetic DNA?

It's not Frankenstein. And it's not human DNA.

A Florida company called CSI Protect makes the product, called SelectaDNA, using the components that comprise DNA: adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine. By putting those substances in special combinations, CSI Protect is able to create unique DNA codes that can be encased in liquid "micro-dots" that are either sprayed on or made to stick to a burglar when a crime happens.

The DNA-filled micro-dots identify a particular store or high-value item, making them highly effective in helping police match a suspect with a particular crime. The technology has been used in the United Kingdom for years, but is only recently being adopted in the United States, mostly by jewelry stores and high-end retailers.

The store can "mark" suspects either through a special mist that can be sprayed on a suspect or intruder or it can be applied to items in the store with a special adhesive so it sticks to a suspect.

The micro-dots contain a tracer material that allows them to be detected with an ultra-violet light. They also contain a special DNA strand that gives them a unique identification.

Potential criminals are also warned with signs that if they try to steal something, they will be tagged for police, just like bank robbers who can be are sprayed with a special dye pack that explodes when they open a wad of stolen bills.

Truman Jewelers participated in a pilot program to test SelectaDNA that had the support of several law enforcement organizations, including the New York State Association of Chiefs of Police, which believes the technology could lead to more arrests and prosecutions of thieves.

SelectaDNA says stores that use the DNA marking system have been able to reduce thefts by 40 to 86 percent as criminals are deterred when seeing a sign that says the system is in use. The spray is water-based and non-toxic. The special code can remain on a suspect's skin and clothing for a month-and-a-half, giving police and prosecutors plenty of time to investigate and arrest them.

Although some retailers have used the technology in the New York City area, company officials say this is the first time that a suspect has been arrested and charged after getting sprayed with the DNA. The system was installed at Truman Jewelers last year as part of a program used to test its effectiveness.

This pilot project was designed to demonstrate the value of forensic marking technology in combating and deterring crime, and assisting with the apprehension of criminals," said Patrick Phelan, executive director of the New York State Association of Chiefs of Police. "Today, we can say definitively that it works.

Video of the theft provided to the news media shows the suspect, whose face is blurred to protect his identity, quickly reaching into a glass case at Truman Jewelers while the employee in charge is in the back. Although the theft appears to be aided by an extreme lack of attention by the employee running the store, Albany police insisted that the theft was not encouraged or set up by CSI Project hoping to prove its product's effectiveness.

The suspect was charged with third-degree grand larceny, Albany Police spokesman Steve Smith said. Conviction on such a felony can result in a sentence of several years in prison if the accused has a history of criminal activity.

In this case, when Albany Police nabbed the suspect, they were easily able to identify that he was sprayed with the SelectaDNA using a UV light.

Although the use of such DNA markers to gain convictions has not yet gained traction in U.S. courts, it providesstore owners like Paul Crabbe, who owns Truman Jewelers, with a sophisticated way to track alleged thieves without disrupting the store's operations.

As a downtown business owner for over three decades, Im committed to creating a safe and secure environment in which my customers can shop and my staff can work with peace of mind, Crabbe said. This technology provides an added layer of protection, and combined with our proactive policies and the professional work of our law enforcement agencies, ensures we can focus on doing business and contributing to our community.

Shepherd Communication & Security of Albany installed the system at Truman Jewelers about a year ago.

Forensic marking technology is poised to revolutionize the way business owners protect their employees, customers, workplaces and assets, said Richard Ruzzo, managing partner of Shepherd Communication & Security.

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Synthetic DNA used to catch alleged jewelry thief in Albany - Times Union

An artist's impression of a woolly mammoth in a snow-covered environment. Leonello Calvetti/Stocktrek Images/Getty Images/Stocktrek Images hide caption

An artist's impression of a woolly mammoth in a snow-covered environment.

Using recovered DNA to "genetically resurrect" an extinct species the central idea behind the Jurassic Park films may be moving closer to reality with the creation this week of a new company that aims to bring back woolly mammoths thousands of years after the last of the giants disappeared from the Arctic tundra.

Flush with a $15 million infusion of funding, Harvard University genetics professor George Church, known for his pioneering work in genome sequencing and gene splicing, hopes the company can usher in an era when mammoths "walk the Arctic tundra again." He and other researchers also hope that a revived species can play a role in combating climate change.

"We are working towards bringing back species who left an ecological void as they went extinct," the company, Colossal, said in answer to questions emailed by NPR. "As Colossal actively pursues the conservation and preservation of endangered species, we are identifying species that can be given a new set of tools from their extinct relatives to survive in new environments that desperately need them."

To be sure, what's being proposed is actually a hybrid created using a gene-editing tool known as CRISPR-Cas9 to splice bits of DNA recovered from frozen mammoth specimens into that of an Asian elephant, the mammoth's closest living relative. The resulting animal known as a "mammophant" would look, and presumably behave, much like a woolly mammoth.

Church and others believe that resurrecting the mammoth would plug a hole in the ecosystem left by their decline about 10,000 years ago (although some isolated populations are thought to have remained in Siberia until about 1,700 B.C.). The largest mammoths stood more than 10 feet at the shoulder and are believed to have weighed as much as 15 tons.

Mammoths once scraped away layers of snow so that cold air could reach the soil and maintain the permafrost. After they disappeared, the accumulated snow, with its insulating properties, meant the permafrost began to warm, releasing greenhouse gases, Church and others contend. They argue that returning mammoths or at least hybrids that would fill the same ecological niche to the Arctic could reverse that trend.

"With the reintroduction of the woolly mammoth ... we believe our work will restore this degraded ecosystem to a richer one, similar to the tundra that existed as recently as 10,000 years ago," the company says.

Love Daln, a professor in evolutionary genetics at the Stockholm-based Centre for Palaeogenetics, is skeptical of that claim.

"I personally do not think that this will have any impact, any measurable impact, on the rate of climate change in the future, even if it were to succeed," he tells NPR. "There is virtually no evidence in support of the hypothesis that trampling of a very large number of mammoths would have any impact on climate change, and it could equally well, in my view, have a negative effect on temperatures."

The body of Lyuba, a baby woolly mammoth who lived about 42,000 years ago on the Yamal Peninsula of Siberia, is exhibited in Hong Kong. South China Morning Post/South China Morning Post via Getty Images hide caption

The body of Lyuba, a baby woolly mammoth who lived about 42,000 years ago on the Yamal Peninsula of Siberia, is exhibited in Hong Kong.

But even if the researchers at Colossal can bring back mammoths and that is not certain the obvious question is, should they?

"I can see some reasons to do the first steps where you are tinkering with cell lines and editing the genomes," Daln says. "I think there is a lot of technological development that can be done [and] we can learn a lot about how to edit genomes, and that could be really useful for endangered species today."

Joseph Frederickson, a vertebrate paleontologist and director of the Weis Earth Science Museum in Menasha, Wis., was inspired as a child by the original Jurassic Park movie. But even he thinks that the more important goal should be preventing extinction rather than reversing it.

"If you can create a mammoth or at least an elephant that looks like a good copy of a mammoth that could survive in Siberia, you could do quite a bit for the white rhino or the giant panda," he tells NPR.

Especially for animals that have "dwindling genetic diversity," Frederickson says, adding older genes from the fossil record or entirely new genes could increase the health of those populations.

Speaking with NPR in 2015, Beth Shapiro, a paleogeneticist at the University of California, Santa Cruz and author of How to Clone a Mammoth: The Science of De-Extinction, said emphatically, "I don't want to see mammoths come back."

"It's never going to be possible to create a species that is 100% identical," she said. "But what if we could use this technology not to bring back mammoths but to save elephants?"

Colossal's expressed aim also brings up another ethical concern: Although the extinction of the mammoth thousands of years ago left a gap in the ecosystem, that ecosystem has presumably now adapted, at least imperfectly, to their absence.

"There is a new normal that has existed for thousands of years that has adapted to the continually changing climate," Frederickson says. "Bringing back something that has all the characteristics that would have thrived in the Pleistocene doesn't necessarily mean it's going to survive today, especially when you're mixing in the unknowns of other genes that are acting in a warm-weather tropical animal and then trying to move it to a new environment."

"There were plants and animals that were living alongside the mammoth that are now long gone or have drastically shrunk in their range, and just bringing back the mammoth won't bring those back," he says.

Colossal says it's not trying to bring back an invasive species but instead wants to "enrich an ecosystem that has been, and continues to be, steadily degrading without its presence."

In yet a different sense, there's the question of how mammoths might fit in.

"The proposed 'de-extinction' of mammoths raises a massive ethical issue. The mammoth was not simply a set of genes it was a social animal, as is the modern Asian elephant," Matthew Cobb, a professor of zoology at the University of Manchester, told The Guardian, in 2017. "What will happen when the elephant-mammoth hybrid is born? How will it be greeted by elephants?"

All of this, of course, assumes that producing a mammophant is even possible. Colossal says it hopes to produce an embryo in six years. But with an estimated 1.4 million individual genetic mutations separating the ancient creatures from Asian elephants, the task of gene splicing could prove a mammoth undertaking.

Perhaps an even bigger obstacle might be developing an artificial uterus for gestating the embryos. Even Church acknowledges that this might not be so easy. Among other things, the company plans to create "a pumping system for exchange of gas, nutrient and waste metabolites, and umbilical blood supply with the goal of carrying a woolly mammoth embryo to term in vitro." Researchers have been working on just such a device, but technical hurdles remain.

"Is this going to happen anytime soon? The answer is absolutely not," says Frederickson.

Daln agrees that the six-year timeline is "exceptionally short." "It seems pretty ambitious," he says.

But Church and his colleagues aren't alone in their ambition. The idea of mammoth de-extinction has been around for some time, and other groups, such as the California-based nonprofit Revive & Restore, which last year managed the first-ever clone of an endangered species, the black-footed ferret, have also been working on a mammoth-elephant hybrid.

The traditional scientific view is that our ancestors hunted the mammoth to extinction, while more recent theories point to habitat destruction at the end of the last ice age as the biggest factor, but with humans still copping part of the blame.

Frederickson thinks that's one of the reasons that the question of de-extinction fueled by pop culture and real-world advances in science is raised so frequently by the patrons at the museum he heads. "I think, as humans, we have a little bit of guilt in us, still knowing that we almost certainly contributed to that extinction event."

"This may be a way of getting that burden off of our backs," he says.

Continued here:
A New Company Wants To Resurrect The Woolly Mammoth Using DNA Splicing - NPR

A teacher accused of defiling and impregnating a 14-year-old Standard 7 girl will have his fate decided by a Molepolole Magistrates Court on Thursday, September 19th.

51-year-old Letlhaetse Motshegare, a Standard 3 teacher at Ditshegwane Primary School in the Kweneng District appeared for continuation of trial before Magistrate Kaveri Kapeko last Wednesday.

Despite the overwhelming evidence against him which includes positive paternity test results, the teacher who gave sworn evidence in court, maintained he was innocent, but the court ruled that he has a case to answer.

In his testimony, Motshegare said on August 14th, 2020 at around 9am while sleeping he was awakened by a child telling him that he had visitors outside.

I found two police officers who requested me to accompany them to the victims place. They showed me some shoe prints and asked who the owner was. I told them they were mine since I went to pass urine by the log, explained Motshegare further saying the victims mother once had a misunderstanding with his girlfriend.

The victims mother told my girlfriend that mafura a a jang o tla a tsholola, she will spill the fat that she was enjoying. Later on, she further told me she is my brothers daughter and that I should take care of her daughter as she was my future wife. She said since the girl was still schooling I should assist in buying things for her. I realised the issue was going far and from then I tried to keep my distance from her, claimed Motshegare.

The teacher further revealed that the victim started bringing him food at his place and that his girlfriend started complaining about the unsolicited gestures.

He said when the school closed during the first national lockdown, the victim went to Kanye before she proceeded to Kotjwe where she came back pregnant.

However, in her testimony the distressed 39-year-old mother, told of how her detective work led to Motshegares arrest.

I found some footmarks outside the hut where my daughter sleeps. They showed that he removed his shoes, jumped over the fence and walked barefooted to the girls house. When he left, he jumped the fence again, put his shoes back on and returned to his house. Then I alerted my neighbours who confronted him, explained the mother of six, adding that she suspected Motshegare because the shoe marks matched the sneakers that she had always seen him wearing.

She told the court that after the matter was reported to the police upon questioning him, Motshegare never denied it was his footmarks rather claimed to have been visiting the student and ensuring she was preparing for the exam.

The mother also claimed to have caught Motshegare sometime in 2019 after his girlfriend alerted her that she saw him entering the traditional hut where the girl sleeps.

We went there and found Motshegare sleeping at my daughters feet. When I asked him why he was sleeping at the victims house, he told me he had a misunderstanding with his partner. I just took the matter lightly as I treated Motshegare like a parent, concluded the mother.

The court further heard that Motshegare gave the victim a black Hisence cellphone to communicate with him.

The cellphone and the victims birth certificate were also produced as exhibits before court.

The young girl who is now a mother of an 8-months-old girl is doing Form 1.

Meanwhile, the accused teacher popularly known as Chipo in the village has since been suspended from duty after the case was registered before court.

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DNA shows teacher impregnated girl, 14 - The Voice Online