Forensic Science PhD Student, Professors Test Beta DNA Analysis Kit

Forensic Science doctoral student Ryan Gutierrez and professors Bobby LaRue and Rachel Houston are featured on the web page of new cutting-edge instrumentation from Verogen, Inc., a leading company in designing solutions for forensic DNA labs.

The project was to determine how effective Verogen's mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) control region kit, the ForenSeq mtDNA Control Region Solution, would be before it became available for purchase. This kit will help enhance the testing of degraded or seriously compromised DNA samples such as human remains that have been buried for decades and rootless hair shafts that current DNA testing does not provide.

"Using new techniques, assays, and technology, like that being innovated by Verogen, I can get more information from a single hair," explained Gutierrez, who spearheaded testing the product under the direction of LaRue and Houston.

Traditional DNA testing uses nuclear DNA, but a human cell only contains two copies in in the nucleus. Crime labs extract DNA and determine if it is degraded or not before running traditional DNA sequence testing, which is known as Short Tandem Repeat (STR) analysis. In DNA, there are sequences that repeat a number of times. Two people having the same number of repeated sequences reduces as more regions of the DNA are analyzed. The case and degradation of the DNA sample determines how extensive they will continue testing.

Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), found in mitochondria outside of a human cell's nucleus, is also the type of DNA used to determine maternal ancestry. Most human cells contain hundreds of copies of mtDNA, which is why it is best for samples with compromised nuclear DNA, but traditional mtDNA testing takes longer.

The Verogen kit gives labs the opportunity to test more samples at once with more confidence in results, Houston explained. Not every lab performs this type of DNA testing because of how extensive it is. Verogen's instrumentation will give labs the option of performing this testing should they choose to invest in it.

Gutierrez focuses on new techniques to recover genetic information from rootless hair shafts, which are hairs without an intact hair bulb. The bulb, or root, contains the best quality DNA, Gutierrez explained. He chose to pursue this avenue of research because of the challenges presented. Hair shafts without a root contain highly degraded DNA and it is limited because it is such a small sample, and the opportunity to work with Verogen instrumentation was the perfect avenue to really test their technology out while continuing his dissertation research.

"I am hoping to improve the ease with which we can conduct our current tests on hair while also pushing the boundaries of the information that can be recovered from hair. This includes not only the ability to identify people but also estimate ancestry and phenotype using only a single piece of hair," Gutierrez said.

LaRue has a longstanding relationship with Verogen and fully believes in maintaining corporate partnerships in order to give students hands-on experience with opportunities such as beta testing new instrumentation and in turn provide new research to crime labs, highlighting how well the instrumentation works.

"It's a way that we give service to not only the local, state, national, and global communities by looking at these things, and it also gives unique opportunities to our students. In addition to these benefits, we provide information and our highly trained graduates to local crime labs ready to work on platforms that are not even available yet. It's a win for everyone involved," La Rue said.

"We [Houston and LaRue] never say no and we wanted to do this beta test to continue to have other opportunities to test other beta instrumentation," Houston said.

Houston and LaRue gave all the lab work and behind-the-scenes credit to Gutierrez. They oversaw his work and collaborated on determining what feedback to give to Verogen in order to improve the product.

This work and experience led Gutierrez to being selected for the Department of Defense (DoD) Science, Mathematics and Research for Transformation (SMART) Scholarship which provides students with a unique opportunity to pursue a STEM degree and begin a rewarding career with the Department of Defense upon graduation.

"It is another way we are preparing our students to be very competitive in a difficult job market for a life of service," LaRue said. "We are really at the cutting edge of what is possible with this."