Massively Parallel Sequencing has revolutionized laboratories' ability to harness more and more information from our genetics. This has led to massive improvements in medical diagnostics, public health (think SARs-CoV-2 variant identification), ancestry determinations, and now forensic science has begun adapting this technology to criminal investigations.
In this episode I speak with Professor Megan Foley, Teresa Snyder-Leiby, and Sarah Copeland about the challenges laboratories are facing as they adopt this type of DNA testing and tools that are available not only to labs, but also to law enforcement, prosecutors, and defense - including the Innocence Project.
This episode is in partnership with the Association of Forensic DNA Analysts and Administrators (AFDAA). Visit afdaa.org to learn more about this professional organization.
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To learn more about the guests, see their bios at https://practicalforensics.science/podcast. Simply scroll down to the post for episode 9.
Megan Foley is a visiting assistant professor in Forensic Molecular Biology at the George Washington University... Her current research focuses on evaluating new products in order to develop recommendations and strategies for laboratories for implementation. Especially focusing on next generation sequencing platforms and analysis software in order to develop analytical parameter recommendations for analysis and probabilistic genotyping.
Sarah Copeland is Senior Biologist SoftGenetics (3+ years) involved in software development, testing and support for forensic fragment CE data analysis and MPS data analysis...
Teresa Snyder- Leiby (one of those older guys with about ½ her career in molecular bio, the last half in forensic DNA analyses). She obtained her degree (BS, MS, PhD) are from Juniata College, North Dakota State Univ. and Penn State. I was a technician at Penn State way back when RFLP was the new DNA fingerprinting method (mid-1980s)….. She joined SoftGenetics in 2008...
Resources
https://softgenetics.com/
Review article about MPS and mitochrondrial MPS https://wires.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/wfs2.1431
Norah Rudin and Keith Inman book mentioned in the episode https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Forensic-DNA-Analysis/dp/0849302331
Also visit ISOGG for more information about mitochondrial DNA, haplogroups, etc https://isogg.org/wiki/Wiki_Welcome_Page
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