Wednesday, March 17, 2010
New DNA method
DNA samples often convict criminals. But many of today's forensic tests are so polluted by soil, tobacco and food remains, for example, that they can not be used. Now researchers at Lund University in Sweden, working together with the Swedish National Laboratory of Forensic Science, SKL, have improved a critical part of the analysis process. This article particularly interesting because of all the work we have been doing with DNA in class recently. according to this article DNA traces have been harder to obtain because of contamination. this article explains how the new methods of doing such things have become easy thanks to leaps in technology.
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2 comments:
I thought Wilson’s article was very interesting, first, I liked the relatively unknown fact that evidence pollution was so common. I also liked how Wilson described how products such as tobacco, food remains, and soil can make evidence useless. Lastly, I enjoyed hearing about how researchers are finding ways to improve the analysis process in Sweden. I also learned that DNA samples are becoming harder to obtain due to contamination. Personally, I thought that some of the theories to improve contamination could have been described because I am not sure what exactly these researchers are doing in these labs. I also think that this article could have had an example of evidence that has been contaminated and fixed. Overall this was a solid and informal article, I learned that evidence is becoming increasingly contaminated and near useless and that DNA is becoming very hard to obtain
As in any review, brevity is always appreciated. And it is clear that Mr. Mathe did that quite well. Without much hoopla the essence of the reviewed article shines through and is very apparent to the reader. What Wilson also did well was provide his own insight into the significance of the article. Such intuition is a rare sight in these kinds of reviews that I greatly appreciated reading. Last but not least, I enjoyed Wilson’s “short and to the point” writing style.
However, I felt the cons of this review may have outweighed the pros. Though as stated, brevity is always appreciated, it should not come at the cost of quality, and I would have liked more emphasis on some statements such as “this article explains how the new methods of doing such things have become easy thanks to leaps in technology”. I’m sure the information to support these ideas existed in the article, it simply had to be elaborated on. Additionally, there were quite a few grammar and punctuation mistakes that could have easily been fixed with a quick skim. In the future, I would recommend that Wilson looks his work over before handing it in.
I was aware that contamination from biological sources could contaminate a source of DNA evidence, but I was not aware that more conventional items, such as soil, could have a similar affect.
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