#48 - Who's your daddy?

It seems we finally know the daddy of poor Dannylyn yada yada Smith Marshall Stern. Now we wonder if that dad will really care about the child or the mega millions that might come from the Marshall side of the family. The point in a Technology blog is the process of DNA identification. There is no greater impact on justice in this country then that of DNA identification. Even a tiny hair fragment can prove the guilt or innocence of a defendant.

There is almost complete identity between any two human beings. Look at your neighbors. You're 99.9% identical. That should make you feel very common, part of a common species. But of course, in a genome of three billion letters, even a tenth of a percent difference translates into three million separate spelling differences. So when we do DNA comparisons, we can't read all three billion letters. What is done instead is that a very small handful of sites of variation are examined. Sites of variation here on this chromosome, perhaps, or one here, or one here, and one picks enough sites of variation to be able to have enough markers of difference.

Interestingly, there isn't an agreed on procedure to look for the common variations in DNA for identification purposes. That's one of the reasons the testing takes so long. Its not like there is one place to look for the identifiers. You have to look in many places and match them all. Close relatives have more matches then non relatives. Only identical twins have the same DNA. So when one gets a DNA match it is always within some realm of probability. Now that may be astronomical probability, say 2 million to 1, but still some probability of not being a match.

The question today is "Should everyone's DNA be on record?" Certainly it would help in criminal identification. ACLU types are fighting with their last breaths to keep that from happening. I suppose there are ways the government could abuse having your DNA information, but hey they already have my social security number. Some worry that a government gone fascist might try to eliminate some with "bad' DNA". State legislatures have decided in some states to set up DNA databases, not for all citizens, but for only those convicted of, say, sex offenses, and other states for those convicted of any felony. With the increase in criminal offenses this database may begin to approach a goodly percentage of the population. Something to think about!