Ming - Are we still performing tests for Orchid. I thought the deal with them was cancelled due to their not following through with their end of the deal. I could definately be wrond on this. Thanks for your input. GL2A GE
Ming OT: Did I ever get you that info regarding fire operations. I had system troubles around that time and lost email addresses etc. Please email me at my XXX.net (private) so that I may reply in private. Thanks GE
mingwan0/GoldEagle...The technique that Orchid has been using on the badly degraded samples was developed by Queensland University in Australia, who licensed the technology to Orchid in September of 2002 specifically for the identification of remains from the 9/11 disaster. Here's the link to the QUT PR announcing the licensing agreement with Orchid:
"City forensic scientists are awaiting approval from state authorities to use an advanced DNA analysis method called single nucleotide polymorphisms, which was adapted from a process used for disease research and requires less genetic material."
But later, TeamLasVegas posted this article, which provides additional detail as to what has been transpiring (great "bubble" Team!):
Experts Eye New DNA Method
By Glenn Thrush Staff Writer
September 10, 2003, 4:29 PM EDT
Scientists aren't sure if a new method of salvaging damaged DNA will turn out to be the key to identifying hundreds more World Trade Center victims or lead up a biochemical blind alley.
Last fall, Bob Shaler called scientists at a Dallas company called Orchid Biosciences, who had experimented with using tiny DNA snippets called "SNIPs" to ID remains that couldn't be analyzed using other techniques.
Shaler -- the city's chief forensic biologist, who has collaborated with almost every DNA expert in the United States in his 30 years as a scientific sleuth -- hoped SNIPs would yield dozens of new identifications before the end of the year.
So far, there hasn't been a single one.
"It's turned out to be the most frustrating thing I've had to deal with in the whole two years," Shaler said.
It's taken a year for Shaler and U.S. government scientists to test and re-test the technique, which involves analyzing smaller, more numerous DNA segments than used in standard methods. Now the hang-up is developing a complex computer program to read the SNIPs.
"I'm not mad," Shaler said. "Just impatient."
Over the next six months, Orchid will analyze thousands of trade center remains, said the company's executive director Mark Stolorow, who first met Shaler at the University of Pittsburgh in the late '60s.
Even then, there's no guarantee the process will work. And technicians may simply find that the remains belonged to people who already have been identified.
"This is where the rubber meets the road," Stolorow said. "We'll finally see how effective this stuff really is."
It looks to me as if they have been testing the QUT method for the past year and ran into a few problems. From the bolded text describing the "hang-up", I wonder whether DNAP might now be involved.
The statements concerning the "testing and re-testing", along with the fact that "over the next six months" Orchid "will be" analyzing thousands of remains, suggests to me that they may have switched gears and are "re-testing" again, only this time perhaps with their "hang-up" resolved.
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