not really new....but just covered here again:
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Plastics Engineering | April 2016 | 4spe.org | plasticsengineering.org
DNA Taggants: Fighting Crime
The technology behind taggants continues to advance. A few suppliers offer DNA taggants: BrandWatch is one, as is DNA Technologies, which specializes in applying its taggants to thin films.
Another supplier is Applied DNA Sciences, an industrial biotech firm that has been in business for ten years and is expanding its technology to a number of applications. The use of DNA as a taggant is a virtually foolproof way of certifying the authenticity of material, says CEO Jim Hayward. “DNA is considered the gold standard by courts globally. It is the most detectable analyte on the planet.”
With levels of use in the parts-per-trillion range, the material is “agnostic to form and function” in chemicals and finished products, he adds.
The company’s DNA is sourced from plant genomes, and can be supplied as a concentrate, solid or liquid, or as a fraction of a raw material. Applied DNA has a patented metering system that thoroughly mixes the taggant with materials, and is working with masterbatch suppliers to develop blending techniques for the microscopic quantities involved. Detecting a DNA taggant, Hayward says, is as simple as taking a surface swab of a material or product, a tape pull, or shaving off a small portion to test. The company supplies testing devices that require little training to use. The cost of DNA taggants, he adds, is “very affordable.”
The accuracy, moreover, is virtually guaranteed. Among the company’s applications are ATMs in the UK. When one of these cash machines detects an attack by thieves, it “decorates all of its cash with DNA,” Hayward says. If the police arrest suspects and recover the stolen money, they test it for the DNA taggant. Thus far, Hayward notes, suspects in 101 ATM thefts have gone to trial, and all 101 trials ended in convictions.
