{"id":40254,"date":"2011-05-02T16:10:32","date_gmt":"2011-05-03T00:10:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/gnxp\/?p=11430"},"modified":"2011-05-02T16:10:32","modified_gmt":"2011-05-03T00:10:32","slug":"osama-bin-laden-and-the-dna-match","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/2011\/05\/02\/osama-bin-laden-and-the-dna-match\/","title":{"rendered":"Osama bin Laden and the DNA match"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/health\/boostershots\/la-heb-osama-bin-laden-dna-testing-20110502,0,5592328.story\">How they determine Osama bin Laden really is Osama bin Laden<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Once samples from all sources are in hand, analysts isolate a bit of DNA from each sample, make lots of copies of it, and then process the copies through a machine that analyzes genetic markers &#8212; DNA fingerprints &#8212; that have been passed down through a subject&#8217;s family. Typically, Bieber said, DNA tests examine around 15 of these markers.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>It typically takes several hours to complete each step of the analysis process, Bieber said, though he noted that in high-profile cases like this one, law enforcement agencies might already have genetic profiles of the relatives available &#8212; which means they\u2019d only have to complete one additional test.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>I checked and it seems that there are paternity testing outfits that offer one day turnaround. So I guess it&#8217;s not implausible that they could have pulled this off. I assume they still use <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/DNA_profiling\">variable number tandem repeats<\/a> for DNA profiling?<\/p>\n<p><b>Update:<\/b> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/05\/03\/science\/03dna.html?partner=rss&#038;emc=rss&#038;%23038;pagewanted=print\">Yeah, short tandem repeats<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How they determine Osama bin Laden really is Osama bin Laden:<br \/>\nOnce samples from all sources are in hand, analysts isolate a bit of DNA from each sample, make lots of copies of it, and then process the copies through a machine that analyzes genetic mark&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72,4,82,1299],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dna","category-genetics","category-genomics","category-osama-bin-laden"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40254"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40254\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40267,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40254\/revisions\/40267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}