Identifying a Culprit In a Bloodbath

worromot writes "A group of geneticists published a method to determine if a given individual's DNA is present in a mixture (e.g., in a pool of blood on a carpet). An individual's DNA can comprise less than 1% of the mixture. (The article is in open access on PLoS Genetics website.) While this is a potential boon for forensics, there are more immediate worries about the privacy of the participants of the genetics studies that had been under way for many years. As Science magazine writes, 'The discovery that a type of genetic data that is widely shared and often posted online can be traced back to individuals has prompted the US National Institutes of Health and the Wellcome Trust to strip some genetic data from their publicly accessible Web sites and NIH to recommend that other institutions do the same.' The gravest worry was that an individual who had someone's genetic code could determine, based on the pooled data, whether the person participated in a disease study and whether they were in the disease group, or thereby glean private health information. NIH plans to ask institutions that have posted pooled data on their own Web sites to take these down, too."

Comments

This is clearly viral marketing

[Anonymous Coward]

For HBO's new series True Blood about Vampires "coming out of the coffin." How can anyone not see it?

UK government pre-empts this problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Thankfully the British government and the NHS have been leaking private medical records en masse for years, cleverly sidestepping this issue completely.

God Save The Queen.

Not all geneticists

[Anonymous Coward]

... to be fair, the first author is a Computer Science Graduate student. I guess they were watching too much CSI.

The Internet is like a permanent stain

[Crazy Taco]

Good luck with taking that stuff down. Posting something on the Internet is like spilling grape juice on a white cloth. If it wasn't made obvious by the age controversy over China's gymnasts, then I'll say it again: once something is on the Internet it stays there, no matter how much scrubbing you do. People need to think first and to not put something up if there is ever a chance it will be an issue.

In the News

[Anonymous Coward]

Here are some more links to news and discussion (thanks google):

Protecting Aggregate Genomic Data Elias A. Zerhouni and Elizabeth G. Nabel (4 September 2008) Science [DOI: 10.1126/science.1165490] http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1165490

Science 5 September 2008, Vol.321 no. 5894 p. 1278 http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/321/5894/1278

Science Now http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2008/829/1

Nature News http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080904/full/news.2008.1083.html

Nature News http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080903/full/455013a.html

New Scientist http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/dn14637-genetic-data-withdrawn-amid-privacy-concerns.html?feedId=online-news_rss20

Financial Times (UK) http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/92b8eed8-7561-11dd-ab30-0000779fd18c.html

LA Times http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-me-dna29-2008aug29,0,1478453.story

AZ Republic http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2008/08/29/20080829biz-dnaswab0829.html

El Mundo http://www.elmundo.es/elmundosalud/2008/08/28/biociencia/1219947993.html

Times (UK) http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article4649977.ece

Genome Web #1 http://www.genomeweb.com/issues/news/149084-1.html

Genome Web #2 http://www.genomeweb.com/issues/news/149097-1.html

Slashdot http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/08/09/06/1943215.shtml

Chemie.de http://www.chemie.de/news/e/86369/

Medical News Today http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/119794.php

Bioinform http://www.bioinform.com/issues/12_35/features/149237-1.html

There is a invited discussion forum in Plos Genetics:

http://www.plosgenetics.org/annotation/getCommentary.action?target=info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pgen.1000167

This will be horrible for false-positives

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine the number of people who may be implicated merely because they bathed in the blood without actually participating in any murders.

CSI trend

[marco.antonio.costa]

That worries me a bit. Seems as law enforcement is nowadays putting all their chips in forensics miracle technologies and stepping back from doing their ol' homework.

I vaguely remember a story of a case that a guy was wrongly convicted because of a cat DNA sample at the place matched a piece of fur in his jacket, but was a false match, cause cats DNA can be almost identical from time to time. Then that would be possible with humans, a la birthday paradox.

One would imagine a bloodbath would leave other evidence, say, witnesses shocked by the gunfire and screaming. Or chainsaw noises. :P

Re:CSI trend

[Anonymous Coward]

Useful forensic evidence is only available in a small fraction of criminal cases, and genetic forensic evidence is even rarer.

However, the probability of these things being useful goes up with the seriousness of the crime. If your car stereo gets stolen, the cops might not bother dusting for prints because it's just not a priority. If you have a serious crime scene, it makes sense to get as much genetic material as you can to help look at.

The new technique of getting prints off of the micro-corrosions that skin oil leaves on bullet cartridge casings is going to help a lot more here in the U.S. where we have so much gun violence. Shooters aren't going to end up with blood in the pool as often as knife- or blunt-instrument fighters.

law enforcement is nowadays putting all their chips in forensics miracle technologies and stepping back from doing their ol' homework.

Homework is the only thing they got in most cases, so don't worry about them losing their elite interrogation tactics. You should be more worried about them going the way of the FBI's rapport-based interrogations than the CIA's coercive tactics which were originally designed to elicit false confessions for propaganda purposes, I shit you not.

One would imagine a bloodbath would leave other evidence, say, witnesses shocked by the gunfire and screaming. Or chainsaw noises.

See, the problem there is that a shocked witness is usually not the witness with the best memory, and chainsaw noises come a lot more often from law abiding citizens trying to keep their storm drains and electrical lines clear. Every little bit helps, and while a potential employer could conceivably scan scientific data to see if a potential employee has a disease, where are they going to get the DNA to match it against? It seems far-fetched and easy to deal with using existing laws saying what you can and can not ask prospective employees.

Re:CSI trend

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems far-fetched and easy to deal with using existing laws saying what you can and can not ask prospective employees.

Clearly you've not been through a session on interview techniques. So what if they ask you stuff they are legally prohibited from asking. Often your reaction will be a sufficient answer for their purposes. If you comply, they have what they want. If you resist, Gee, you don't have quite the match for the skillset we were hoping for. If you think you can file a lawsuit, how will you prove what went on behind closed doors? Wear a wire? No way -- in any two-party-consent state, it's an illegal wiretap. So for all practical purposes, you may as well just get down on all fours and tug your cheeks wide.

Even if you win your case, do you really want to work in the resulting poisoned atmosphere?

Re:CSI trend

[Anonymous Coward]

If your car stereo gets stolen, the cops might not bother dusting for prints because it's just not a priority.

What does it take for a cop to give a shit? My house was burgled many years ago. My wife and I had, over the years been given a complete set of sterling silverware. We got knocked off the same week that the butt-banging (Texan, wouldn't you know) Hunt brothers nearly pulled off their scheme to corner the market on silver. The burglars left with a third of my yearly gross under one arm, not to mention other silver things.

The POS cops did nothing in the way of investigation. One smug son of a bbitch even told us the silver was probably already (less than 12 hours after the break-in) nothing more than a puddle of molten metal half a state away, in LA.

You can be sure they'd have been a hell of a lot more detail-oriented if exactly the same amount had been stolen from the mayor's house.

Re:CSI trend

[Anonymous Coward]

Anonymous coward here to play the cynic.

  The problem with DNA being regarded as their ace in the hole removes all requirements of real police work, and these days dumb trigger-happy cops are becoming all too common. It also presents an easy "Get Out of Jail Free" card for anyone in a position of authority. There are enough identical matches that it could just be pinned on the black guy.

These authority figures are the same deceitful people known for starting wars, spying on their citizens, distributing massive amounts of misinformation and propaganda, using secret torture prisons, sneaking unconstitutional bills through congress following national tragedies, disrupting peaceful protests by showing up to beat and jail activists, using programs such as COINTELPRO to neutralize political movements, etc., etc., and that's just what we know of.

So we're entrusting these government and law enforcement agencies to a secret database of all of our DNA?? Well, maybe you are.

Race

[MillionthMonkey]

A lot of SNPs and coding regions can be used to identify haplotypes- e.g. we might know that the probability of finding an A rather than a T at a particular base position on chromosome 3 is 90% for Asians and 20% for everyone else, or 40% of people with Huntingdon's and 90% of people without, etc. If you can gather SNP information from locations that are spread out across linkage points on different chromosomes, you can pretty much pin down the phenotype of the guy if any data has ever been gathered specifically mapping the phenotype distribution to the base pair probability. And if you're being genotyped, they'll know your race along with a lot of other phenotypic information about you from the paperwork they'll have you fill out.

This is a weird situation, because race is only one of many attributes you have that you have no control over, but we obviously single it out and make it a sore spot. Now that they can genotype bloodbaths, will we get lynchings of color blind guys to come from this? Probably not, but I can easily imagine something like this igniting racial tensions.

fear mongering ftw

[thermian]

OMG DNA!!!!!11111one

You know what, I can pretty easily say that without a lot of expense, there's not really any real danger of your DNA's 'privacy' (whatever the fuck that is) being violated. Do you have any idea how much DNA analysis costs?

And if it is, if someone gets hold of your DNA? Well, DNA analysis is a resource hungry affair. Without prior knowledge of a reason to try, I can't see that any analysis would be done. It takes experienced people, and there is more than enough work examining DNA from crime scenes to keep them busy, without data mining random DNA as well.

I spent two years working on DNA analysis techniques, particularly with regard to the application of data mining (not for the kind of thing that would be a privacy issue). We, by which I mean the DNA analysis crowd, are a long way from anything which could be applied on a large enough scale to pose a genuine threat to someones 'DNA Privacy'.

Honestly, there are big enough problems to solve without wasting time on sensationalist bullshit like this.

Re:fear mongering ftw

[MillionthMonkey]

I spent two years working on DNA analysis techniques, particularly with regard to the application of data mining (not for the kind of thing that would be a privacy issue).

That's interesting- what techniques specifically?

re: fear mongering ftw

[pnotequalsnp]

Do you have any idea how much DNA analysis costs?

Yes, yes I do. And it would cost you under $100 bucks (heck they said they need less than
I agree there isn't much thread to someone's DNA privacy. Nonetheless, what about companies like 23andMe or Navigenics, who DO perform these SNP analysis' and DO have the information (they have mirrors of all public data).

Oh yes, you worked on DNA analysis techniques, great specificity. How long ago was that?

Did you see the part about figuring out if relatives are in the mixture from the Science/Nature articles? That blows my mind, since I could see if my Dad/Sister/etc participated in one of these studies (Alzheimer's or Schizophrenia?).

Re:fear mongering ftw

[rwillard]

OMG DNA!!!!!11111one

You know what, I can pretty easily say that without a lot of expense, there's not really any real danger of your DNA's 'privacy' (whatever the fuck that is) being violated. Do you have any idea how much DNA analysis costs?

And if it is, if someone gets hold of your DNA? Well, DNA analysis is a resource hungry affair. Without prior knowledge of a reason to try, I can't see that any analysis would be done.

You're right, of course. Information posted on the internet is never archived, and the barrier to doing data analysis on collected information never lowers over time.

Re:fear mongering ftw

[thermian]

google for 'hypermotif thesis'
That should get my stuff. no direct URL, sorry, I learned my lesson once before regards putting my hompage url on slashdot

Re:fear mongering ftw

[thermian]

You're right, of course. Information posted on the internet is never archived, and the barrier to doing data analysis on collected information never lowers over time.

Ok, You're suffering from a lack of understanding regarding DNA. Let me enlighten you. DNA is not like web pages. In spite of what you may have read in the press, we have barely even started to dip our toes in the sea of data it contains.

DNA fragments archived because they are available on the web is almost entirely useless when it comes to any sort of privacy issue.

Once data, any data, loses context, its just junk of no interest. Labelled data is where its at, science wise, and good quality labelled data is hard to come by. It takes a lot of work to generate DNA datasets that have value, and no-one willing to put in the work to do this is going to be interested in googling internet archives for their DNA.

Re:fear mongering ftw

[MillionthMonkey]

It looks like you're essentially applying an evolutionary algorithm to mRNA expression data, which requires a run of many chips over a time series, over experimental parameters, and over sample replicates. These are genotype arrays. They cost less than a thousand bucks each and you only run one per individual (maybe several replicates). Plus the measurements are easier because it's a digital signal, so the scanners don't have to be terribly sophisticated. Already people are making ones as small as shoe boxes.

The "data mining" that would be involved would be the extraction of population data, but this has been done. And that was expensive, requiring lots of chips, but it only needs to be done once per population to derive a large amount of phenotypic information from a given genotype. And a lot of this data has already been published. For thousands of SNPs, we know which ones are associated with which phenotypes now, and with what probabilities. And Illumina just started selling a chip with 1.2 million SNP probes on it, if you're asking for a large enough scale.

How would this be any different from just running a SNP chip?

Re:fear mongering ftw

[thermian]

Actually I wasn't referring to the expression time series work, that was interesting, but all it really demonstrated was that we aren't at the point of being able to do it in a useful fashion.

I was referring to the DNA pattern extraction, that requires a lot of work. I only applied it to promoters, but it has wider uses that are still being explored (including website similarity, oddly enough..). Pattern matching is required for data mining DNA, and we have only just started to get a grip on the very basics of the task.

On the whole my comment was based on the many hundreds of papers I've read on the subject, not my own work.

Re:fear mongering ftw

[evanbd]

DNA analysis will get cheaper, never more expensive. The techniques to extract signal from the data will get better, never worse.

Certainly you're correct that the techniques are too expensive today for this to be an immediate concern. So when is the appropriate time to begin worrying about the privacy implications of cheap, ubiquitous DNA techniques? Would it be better to wait until after they arrive, and are in greater use, and hurriedly try to put together policies, laws, and other safeguards?

What, pray tell, is wrong with trying to solve a problem before it gets out of hand?

Re:fear mongering ftw

[worromot]

Do you have any idea how much DNA analysis costs?
About $350, the last time I checked. For about 500,000 genotypes per individual.

There is also a very major technology push for the "thousand-dollar genome", i.e. an ability to get a complete genome for $1000.

The core of the finding, by the way, is that the pooled data that everyone thought was completely safe for privacy point of view, is now no longer so. It is a problem for people who have agreed to take part in these studies (and that's a lot of people: a typical large scale study can involve 20,000 patients or more).

spent two years working on DNA analysis techniques... We, by which I mean the DNA analysis crowd
For what's it's worth, I've spent the last 15 years working on various DNA analysis techniques. I don't know about your "crowd", but the general genetics community takes issues of privacy quite seriously.

Re:fear mongering ftw

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly, there are big enough problems to solve without wasting time on sensationalist bullshit like this.

Bullshit yourself, idiot.

Technology, as they say, marches on. That's why someone who committed, or did not commit, a crime can be indicted or acquitted of the crime, even if it occurred twenty years before the DNA techniques were known. If this shit goes unchallenged now, ten years from now, the cops will be weeping on TV because they're being deprived of "this valuable crime-fighting tool". Jesus, everyone knows no LEO should ever be deprived of any "tool", no matter how ineffective it may be.

The worst goddanmed law my fellow Californians ever passed was the one a few years back when they voted to allow the pigs to seize a DNA sample from you at the time of arrest. No need to wait for arraignment or a trial. Of course, if you're not convicted, you can apply to have the sample destroyed. Idiots, APPLY means someone can turn down your APPLICATION. It should be a DEMAND, not a hat-in-hand APPLICATION, and there should be certifiable results. The same oversight standards should be applied to the destruction of the sample as were applied to the chain of evidence. As it stands, they can say they destroyed the sample and you'll never be allowed within a mile of any proof that they did so.

Re:fear mongering ftw

[Anonymous Coward]

ooo.. a close cockfight between /.ers. The only way to decide.. UID comparison!

You win worromot, but by a pretty close margin.

Re:fear mongering ftw

[ddoz]

Do you have any idea how much DNA analysis costs?

A quick google resulted in an affordable price of $999.
Pocket change to the typical corporate entity. Toilet paper to the typical banker. That's not taking into account who could be doing the work(self interest) or who could be influencing them to get it done(or take a trip to Abu Ghraib).

there is more than enough work examining DNA from crime scenes to keep them busy, without data mining random DNA as well.

Not true. DNA analysis is a rarity in many murder cases. Hell, any investigation at all is uncommon, unless it's a white family with money. Law enforcement doesn't have the budget for them all.

We, by which I mean the DNA analysis crowd, are a long way from anything which could be applied on a large enough scale to pose a genuine threat to someones 'DNA Privacy'.

Forget about DNA privacy, what about my privacy? A simple test can determine whether you're biologically connected to your parents, have diabetes, are lactose intolerant, have bipolar disorder, what you're allergic to, your risk of arthritis, even if you have dry earwax, etc., etc., etc., and why.

Honestly, there are big enough problems to solve without wasting time on sensationalist bullshit like this.

Why should we pick and choose? And I don't see how not being thrilled this information is in the hands of our increasingly corrupt government and law enforcement is "wasting time".

Re:fear mongering ftw

[rhyre]

The 'DNA layman' hears Craig Ventner, and we get the impression that DNA sequencing is on the same path as Moore's law, where it's exponentially less costly to sequence someone's DNA every few years.

So I'm still not 100% clear on why proper storage of samples far into the future won't create a virtual 'DNA dragnet' for future analysis.

Identifying a Culprit in a Fart-Storm

[Anonymous Coward]

Now *that* would be newsworthy.

scenario

[Jafafa Hots]

I wondered once... if you were going to commit a crime, and minimized your chances of leaving DNA (shaved head, etc. you STILL leave some... so, what if you raided the dumpster behind a barbershop, got hair from dozens of different people, and blew it around the crime scene with a fan?

Even if they spotted your hair, you would have deniability, if it's your own barber.

Re:scenario

[denzacar]

So, police (or whoever does the investigation) analyzes all the DNA samples (it only takes time...) and finds YOU and/or dozen other people might have been at the scene of the crime.

So, they question and investigate ALL of you further, based on the fact that there is quite a good chance that one or more of you committed the crime.
Eventually alibis, evidence and motives WILL bring them to your door.
Now... proving beyond reasonable doubt that you are guilty and convicting you is something else.

Unless you live in a CSI world.
In that case, the mere mention of words DNA, computer, photo, image or evidence will make you start babbling uncontrollably about any and all crimes and misdemeanors you ever did or thought about doing.

Yes but..

[The Creator]

How would you explain traces of all those ppl's hair at you place after?

Re:Yes but..

[Anonymous Coward]

There was an orgy at the barbershop, duh.

Re:Yes but..

[Jafafa Hots]

well of course, you put the hair in a trash bag straight into your stolen van, then you burn the van and all clothes worn on the job, shower, etc. Hopefully none gets into your house.

GATTACA

[Anonymous Coward]

I am surprised no one has tagged this "GATTACA" yet.

Poor choice of words

[PPH]

The article starts off talking about identifying culprits in a bloodbath. And then they go on to talk about 'pooled data'. This gives rise to rather unsettling images.

just some kind of data mining?

[ANCOVA]

It sounds like some kind of clustering algorithm, which is nothing new in the field of genetic data mining. Nothing to do with a bloodbath, just a "pool" of data in the database sense.

It's really only a problem

[smittyoneeach]

...if you're a lacrosse player at Duke University.

hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I still drunk or does the title have nothing to do with the summary? I read bloodbath and thought it would be about identifying the perpetrator of said bloodbath but found out it wasnt even remotely close to that

Re:Joke about ReiserFS

[Anonymous Coward]

So a Priest, a Rabbi, and Hans Reiser walk into a bar...

TGen

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is the press release from the non-for-profit institute where this was discovered

http://tgen.org/news/index.cfm?pageid=57&newsid=1204

TGen is based out of Phoenix Arizona

how long before DNA analysis is dirt cheap?

[Anonymous Coward]

why the fuck do fucktards like you always fucking talk about how its fucking expensive, so it doesn't fucking matter if its a fucking retarded idea or fucking unconstitutional.
Don't you fucking get it, first they fucking get the fucking law on the fucking books, on their their fucking side,
and fucking sooner or fucking later the fucking technlology catches the fuck up,
and then you get fucked over like fucking godzilla fucks over a fucking poodle.

Re:how long before DNA analysis is dirt cheap?

[shentino]

It's trolls like you that make censorship of any sort desirable.

However, I agree with what you are trying to say.

More worrying is the potential use in law

[AmiMoJo]

The "low copy count" method of multiplying a tiny sample of DNA to produce one large enough to make an identification has already been discredited in the UK (although the police continue to use it), and I can see this going the same way. A drop of blood will be found, the police will find some tiny sample of some poor guy who happened walk past that spot at some point and they will then have to fight it in court.

It's a shame the police can't be trusted to look at this and regulate their own use of it, but past experience with other DNA and fingerprint techniques has shown that they can't.

Useless for forensic

[Anonymous Coward]

Their approach is based on the asumption that the "blood bath" dna comes from a specific population for which the SNP alleles frequencies is known (such as 1 one the 4 Hapmap population). I know for a fact (I work in dna analysis business) that SNP allele frequencies can vary quite extensively from various sub-stratas of what is considered a very homogenous population. This broken assumption thus makes the concept totally innaplicable for forensic use. As for privacy issue with GWAS, it is again very far fetched because those studies typically contain 1000+ individuals and the population stratification remains a problem...