Super Bowl Footballs Get The DNA Touch

theodp writes "All 120 Super Bowl XL footballs will be marked with a drop of synthetic DNA to thwart potential counterfeiters (free reg. required to read) who might be tempted to sell phony game-used Super Bowl footballs, which can be worth thousands of dollars. Exposed to a specific laser frequency, the DNA glows to a bright green. 'The chance of replicating this exact DNA sequence is one in 33 trillion,' said the president of PSA/DNA Authentication Services."

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[Bananatree3]

Here's the text of the article for easy read:

DETROIT -- Super Bowl XL comes with a guarantee: Every football -- all 120 of them -- will be dropped.
That is, each will be marked with a drop of synthetic DNA to thwart potential counterfeiters who might be tempted to sell phony "game-used" Super Bowl footballs, which can be worth thousands of dollars. Exposed to a specific laser frequency, the DNA glows to a bright green.
"The ball can change hands a thousand-plus times, but it will never lose that DNA," said Joe Orlando, president of PSA/DNA Authentication Services, a division of Santa Ana-based Collector's Universe Inc., which for the sixth consecutive year marked the Super Bowl footballs. "The chance of replicating this exact DNA sequence is one in 33 trillion, so it's virtually impossible."
The NFL has prepared 10 dozen Wilson footballs for Sunday's game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Seattle Seahawks and plans to use a new one on every play of the first half, before going to a 12-ball rotation after halftime. It's something the league has done for several Super Bowls, donating some to charity auctions, setting aside others for selected players, coaches and officials, and sending the one used on the opening kickoff to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
"You have to guard that one like your life depends on it," said Mike Pereira, supervisor of NFL officials.
Some players said they would be holding on a little extra tight too.
Steeler receiver Antwaan Randle El was caught off guard when informed about the continuous shuttle of new pigskin.
"Every play? I didn't know that," he said Wednesday. "That's not good.
"It's slick, it's slippery. Even when you go to tuck it, the ball's prone to come out a little more often than normal."
Added quarterback Charlie Batch, backup for Steeler starter Ben Roethlisberger: "If they're not broken in, that could present a problem. But it shouldn't be a problem for Ben because he wears a glove. I don't think that necessarily would affect him, but that could affect anybody [else] who has to touch the ball. It's a little more slick and the laces aren't broken in."
And the grip is a concern even for those who don't catch or carry the ball.
"You get those new balls that are right out of the bag, that's an issue," said Greg Warren, Pittsburgh's long snapper, whose job it is to accurately hike the ball back on field-goal attempts, conversion kicks and punts. "You just have to make sure you stay focused. Because if that ball slips just a little bit, it makes a big difference.
"For me, if the ball slips out too soon, I'm going to get a real low snap. So I have to be aware of that. But I don't want to grip it too hard, because if you grip it too long it's going to go high."
Said Carolina receiver Steve Smith, who played in the Super Bowl two years ago: "It's no big deal. You can't even tell. We play with new balls all the time."
But New England tight end Christian Fauria, who played in the last two Super Bowls, says of the balls: "Quarterbacks and kickers definitely know the difference between a good one and a bad one.... It's like handing a pitcher a brand-new baseball after every pitch. They like to scuff it up."
To break in the footballs, the NFL uses a machine similar to an electric golf-shoe buffer. It's quicker and more effective than rubbing each by hand.
"They really take the rain protectant off of them, which kind of acts like Vaseline at times," Seattle kicker Josh Brown said. "But as much as we play in bad weather and the rain up there in Seattle, it shouldn't be a problem."
New footballs, old footballs, Seahawk receiver Darrell Jackson said he doesn't have a preference.
"My job is to catch it," he said. "Doesn't matter if it's slick, or if it's wet, or if it doesn't have enough grip on it. Whatever ball's out there, I'll just hold on tight."
Teammate Robbie Tobeck, a center, doesn't seem worried either: "We use new balls every game. I haven't had a problem with it at all."
NFL kickers and punters always have

Re:odds for random or deliberate attempt??

[John Newman]

Your intuition is right on. It must be about a 22-23 nucleotide oligomer. 4^22 = 18 trillion or so. Like someone else said, DNA doesn't glow green, so they either used tagged nucleotides or just spiked their DNA-containing ink with a green fluorescent dye. The dye, I suspect, is just so they know where they put the DNA without having to actually discolor the ball.

You'd be amazed if you knew what their profit margin must be. Oligos like that cost about 10 bucks for enough to probably detectably tag all 120 footballs, and you can synthesize any sequence you want. A couple of bucks for that fluoresence dye, some ink, and I bet it costs them about a quarter a ball altogether. You could even do this sort of thing yourself for not much more. Most DNA synthesis companies will happily do business with private citizens. The only substantial cost would be verifiying an object that someone brings in, but even that just requires a half-decent molecular biology tech and some not-too-expensive equipment. You don't need to actually sequence the thing to verify that it matches a reference sample - you can just cheaply and quickly test binding affinity. I'll bet they charge for verification, anyway. So this whole scheme is probably the next-best thing to printing money.

(IAAMB - molecular biologist)

Re:Perhaps

[ebuck]

Ok, here we go.

DNA oxidizes, right? I mean I'm just a lowly ex-research biologist who only worked with the stuff for a period of about 3.5 years; however, I wouldn't expect that base sequence pair to hold together for very long.

Plus DNA doesn't glow green (unless they've discovered something new). There are dyes that can work their way into the double helix and make it appear red (due to the dye being red), but shining a laser at DNA would probably result in a lot of disconnected (or abnormally bonded) base pairs, and a broken (or oxidized) ribose backbone.

I'm suspecting that they are actually tagging the DNA covalently with a flourescent marker that glows green. Such "bonded" markers have been available for quite some time (and in a variety of colors), so such dyes would be easily available to the football engineers (hehe) out there. As the parent poster suggested, then all you would have to do is add the marker to the existing DNA on any old football, and apart from sampling and sequencing the DNA, most people would be statisfied at first glance.

Even though DNA sequencing is getting cheaper every day (I imagine a private individual would have to pay a bit more, but in-house services usually charge around $4 to $8 per sample) so cost won't be a factor. However, the results can be forged, and not many people will tolerate "oversampling" of their prized $5000 football. "Excuse me sir, by may I take a slice?"

Finally, the DNA would oxidize over time, leaving less and less material that would test positive.

Provided that the base pair sequence is published (as it would have to be to allow verification), then sequencing it from scratch is a little more expensive, but an everyday task. And don't get into "authentic" vs. "knock-off" molecule debates please: if all of the atoms are in the same places, the orgins of both molecules are indistinguishable.

What would be cooler is to transgenically insert a sequence into pig zygotes that produces a protein which resists oxidation and flouresces with laser light. Then the whole football would glow, but it's glow would increase with intensity of the right wavelength. Players might complain about it being harder to see a slightly glowing football, but such complaints usually fall on deaf ears, and it's not like the football design never changes (or that we lack "neon" footballs today).

Re:Perhaps

[drooling-dog]

All a counterfeiter needs do is make it glow roughly the same green. No need to actually replicate the DNA sequence: no-one will actually check that anyway!

I assume that they're just attaching a flourescent molecule to the DNA so they can find it for sequencing when there's a dispute about authenticity. Of course, there's nothing to stop anyone from sequencing the DNA on an authentic ball, and then synthesizing more DNA with the same sequence. It's only 22 or 23 bases, and you can order customized DNA of that length pretty cheaply from many companies that do that sort of thing.

I'm not sure where they came up with the "33 trillion" figure, though. There are about 17.6 trillion (4^22) possible different 22-base strands, and 70.4 trillion possible 23-base strands...