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DNA-Tagging Used To Nab Counterfeit Olympic Goods
Logic Bomb writes: "The San Francisco Chronicle is running a story about the way Olympic officials are fighting counterfeit 'official' Olympic merchandise. Invisible ink containing DNA strands from an unnamed Australian athlete is used to write on almost everything sold -- that's around 50 million items. A team of 'logocops' then travels around Australia, using scanners to check merchandise at random. Over 120,000 items have already been identified as counterfeit and seized. The story has more details." Sounds like SF, but then ... flying cars aside, plenty of humans now have radio phones and organs they weren't born with. There are some other interesting applications named toward the end of the article, too.
sell blue dresses. Don't want to know what kinda DNA is on them!
Sig it.
I came real close to rolling my car the other day, and DNA tagged my underwear....
Have we become such a greedy people that we must make sure that no one else can make money from any idea that someone or some group claims to be theirs. The Olympics have been around for ever, yet we let someone own the name, and make other people pay to say this is official. We are in such a need for money that we must tag our merchandise with DNA to insure that no one else sells it. Oh and by the way, you can duplicate DNA without having to go back and get more samples from the donor, but hey what do I know.
Only the one person who buys a DVD will be able to watch it!
"Please supply a blood sample to start playback"
-- IANAEG - I am not an elder god.
Next time he or she commits a crime, there'll be no worries about the DNA evidence! I can just see it now...
"Can you explain how your unique DNA got onto this crowbar?"
"Well, not exactly, sir, but you can see it's the official crowbar of the 2000 Olympics."
- Brian
"Nothing prevents people from taking a sample of that concoction of DNA off a T-shirt and PCR'ing it..."
No, but making the counterfeit DNA tags may be quite difficult. The DNA tag probably consists of a short sequence that is present at only low concentrations. To be able to make PCR copies, you first have to figure out what primers to use, which may not be too easy since the sequence is kept secret.
If they're smart, it will be mixed in with a lot of trash sequences as well, to serve as decoys. Since we have no way to pick out what's the real key sequence, we would have to copy them all -- and it's very easy to generate astronomical numbers of decoys.
Of course, if someone were to get hold of the test equipment they use, then the problem becomes a lot easier.