[HN Gopher] Extracting DNA from the air - DNA evidence of human ...
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Extracting DNA from the air - DNA evidence of human occupancy in
indoor premises
Author : punnerud
Score : 235 points
Date : 2025-03-15 18:38 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| dc396 wrote:
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119177/ was conservative. Great
| movie though.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| I feel like this is one of those prescient movies like
| Pleasantville and Idiocracy we should force voters to watch
| again before voting.
| bilekas wrote:
| So glad someone mentioned that. A great movie I still enjoy
| today!
| treetalker wrote:
| From the abstract:
|
| > Detectable levels of DNA were also observed in air and dust
| samples from ultra-clean forensic laboratories which can
| potentially contaminate casework samples.
|
| Great news for criminal defense attorneys.
| thfuran wrote:
| The defense attorneys of criminal criminal forensics lab
| technicians at least.
| Hupriene wrote:
| Dexter Morgan wins again.
| looofooo0 wrote:
| Phantom of Heilbronn strikes again:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_of_Heilbronn
| moontear wrote:
| How would that argument go? As far as I understand it, the DNA
| of the occupants of said lab may be found. That would mean that
| the criminal samples may also contain DNA of the lab
| occupants/scientists. Isn't that the case currently as well and
| those DNA parts would be omitted?
| archerx wrote:
| What if the murderer works in the lab?
| a_bonobo wrote:
| The Phantom of Heilbronn!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_of_Heilbronn
| archerx wrote:
| That was interesting story, the ending in hindsight seems
| obvious. Thank you for sharing.
| greenpresident wrote:
| That would ideal, yet we still got things like this:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_of_Heilbronn
|
| Woman at a cotton swab factory was identified after being
| considered a serial killer.
| yzydserd wrote:
| It's possibly not the GP's point, but in general the more DNA
| that is available the better from a defense perspective. Many
| wrongful convictions involve a lack of physical evidence.
| Recent advances like "touch dna" and "m-vac" have led to new
| DNA evidence used in actual innocence decisions. Too often, a
| jury convicts a likely suspect on weak circumstantial
| evidence. Just as with Touch DNA, Air DNA will create new
| problems with avoiding contamination.
|
| The path toward Air DNA has been known for years [0].
| Wouldn't be surprised to learn crime scene investigators have
| been sampling and storing air in high profile cases ready for
| the tech to catch up.
|
| [0] https://www.science.org/content/article/dna-pulled-thin-
| air-...
| mrtksn wrote:
| It cuts both ways, there was this high profile case of the son
| of a very rich and powerful family brutally murdering his
| working class girlfriend in his family mansion with some family
| present, motives still unknown.
|
| In the autopsy they discovered sperm from a 3rd person on her
| body, tried to claim that it was an infidelity case(you get
| different sentece depending on your motives and circumstances)
| but later it was revealed that this was just a contamination
| during the autopsy.
|
| So, the more forensic options the better but likely longer and
| more expensive trials. All lawyers win.
| paulluuk wrote:
| > just a contamination during the autopsy.
|
| How does sperm end up on her body during the autopsy? Are we
| talking necrophilia or are there multiple murdered bodies
| laying next to each other and the tools are re-used or
| something?
| mrtksn wrote:
| IRRC The official explanation is that there were a few
| autopsies going on at the same time in that facility and it
| came from the body next to hers. The public opinion was
| that they bribed the technician to contaminate her body.
|
| The whole case is a huge mess with attempts of cover ups,
| months long manhunts and all kinds of conspiracy theories.
| The killer was sentenced to 24 years of prison but unalived
| himself in prison and there're still conspiracy theories
| saying that he actually escaped to China because he was
| studying Chinese in prison prior that. This happened more
| than 10 years ago and last year they opened his grave to
| check the remains and again it was confirmed that that's
| him. Yet, this is still not enough to end the public
| discussion and conspiracy theories.
|
| Anyway, if anyone is curious this is the case in question:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Munevver_Karabulut
|
| Unfortunately, the juicy literature around that is mostly
| in Turkish.
| bozhark wrote:
| You can say he killed himself it's not kitkots
| genewitch wrote:
| Tiktots?
| nkrisc wrote:
| > unalived himself
|
| In English the phrase is "killed himself".
| mrtksn wrote:
| Feel free to use your choice of synonym when you are
| writing something.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Normally I'm more than happy to roll with someone's
| choice of words - if you want to use "literally" to
| describe things that are not literal, please, fill your
| skibidi or whatever, but I'm hostile towards it when it's
| an attempt to appease a corporation's filters. I get it,
| you gotta use it where you gotta use it, but I hate the
| indicators that our language is being filtered everywhere
| by certain social media's moderation rules.
|
| That's not language changing because of fresh eyes, it's
| because of tired eyes looking towards the bottom dollar.
| mrtksn wrote:
| It's not about filters, I like using unalive in the
| context of suicide when I have no sympathy to the person
| who dies. It's such a nice dehumanizing word.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| But it's entered the vernacular because of the filters.
| mrtksn wrote:
| That's true, some day in the future somebody will make 5
| seconds long, long format documentary about the
| fascinating origins of the word :)
|
| It has a passive aggressive character, I like that word a
| lot.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| I get the opposite out of it. Using the negative prefix
| weakens the word, emphasizing what it is not instead of
| what it is, when act like suicide is not just the state
| of being not alive. The phrasing isn't committed enough
| to be oxymoronic and it ends up feeling impersonal and
| indirect.
|
| But maybe I'm just an old man yelling at a cloud.
| kube-system wrote:
| Pick any sentence and trace the words back to their
| origin and you'll find some sort of story about where it
| was borrowed from. That's just how language works. It
| isn't anything new -- we're all just older than we've
| ever been. Every generation coins new terms.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| I'm not against language growth, but the reason this is
| happening is upsetting to me.
| ZacNorth wrote:
| If you're taking the time to write one or more posts
| about this, you are implicitly against language growth,
| you've just found a justification for being against it
| that you find acceptable to your worldview.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Yes, there are occasions where I would take exception to
| language evolution. If we entered a pattern of 1984-era
| newspeak I'd take exception there as well. I think it is
| usually the product of a poorly considered stance for one
| to be an absolutist about the vast majority things.
| kube-system wrote:
| Euphemism is already common, particularly when discussing
| sensitive topics like the cycle of life, bodily
| functions, etc. You are probably okay with many existing
| euphemisms because they are familiar. This really isn't a
| social media thing, newspaper obituaries also use
| euphemisms for death. e.g. "passed away", "departed",
| "eternal rest", etc.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Yes, because that euphemistic language is there to
| lighten the blow. "unalive" is an attempt to bypass a
| social media filter and speaks to the shift in how and
| why words enter our lexicon.
| kube-system wrote:
| Are you against profanity filters? What's the difference?
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Well, because "suicide" isn't profane. It might be
| considered a pseudo-profanity, but people don't stop
| saying swearing because of profanity filters. This is an
| instance where the filter is feeding back into the
| zeitgeist.
| nkrisc wrote:
| It sounds kinder and gentler, to me, more like a word
| you'd use in polite company to avoid speaking crassly
| about someone respected.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Suicide is a statement, it is the last act of somebody
| against the society. It is something serious that puts
| the burden on the shoulders of the remaining. It has
| long, deep history attached to it.
|
| Unalive on the other hand is a simplistic word that has
| neither of those, it is originally derived as an attempt
| to bypass automatic filter. IMHO using it for someone
| without the practical need to bypass censorship takes
| away the heft of their act. Makes it insignificant.
| itishappy wrote:
| HN doesn't filter "suicide" though. This is organic
| language. Free-range, grass-fed, and GMO-free.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Yeah, my argument is we shouldn't use "unalive" when we
| don't have to.
| adolph wrote:
| you just did tho
|
| (I am currently reading and infected by Hofstadter's
| "Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of
| Thinking" which I think would side with using unalive,
| which might also construe a set larger than that of
| "dead.")
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use%E2%80%93mention_distinc
| tio...
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| I quoted it for specificity. I suppose I could have said
| "the word formerly known as suicide" but that is probably
| a phrasing that anyone young enough to unironically use
| the word formerly known as suicide wouldn't understand.
| inetknght wrote:
| > _I 'm hostile towards it when it's an attempt to
| appease a corporation's filters_
|
| Maybe you should be hostile towards the corporations that
| create those filters instead.
| kossae wrote:
| Why not both?
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Yes. I am more upset by the one responsible for the
| filtering than the effect it's having on the zeitgeist.
| nkrisc wrote:
| I only mentioned it because it took me a few moments to
| figure out what you had actually written since I assumed
| it was a typo or mistranslation. It distracts from what
| you've written.
| unwind wrote:
| TIL that the kids actually use it [1], and it's in
| dictionaries [2] etc so arguably it's actually English.
|
| [1]: https://medium.com/new-writers-welcome/unalive-the-
| birth-of-...
|
| [2]: https://www.dictionary.com/browse/unalive
|
| Edit: typo.
| weberer wrote:
| They only say it to avoid word filters on certain
| algorithm-driven sites. Your comment won't be
| automatically flagged, demoted, or shadow banned here for
| using naughty words that corporate advertisers don't
| like.
| skyyler wrote:
| Surely you can understand that when certain behaviours or
| phrases become fashionable, they can become detached from
| the culture that generated them.
| accrual wrote:
| I'm in agreement, but one thought that crossed my mind is
| how the population in China self-censors and I wonder if
| this is kind of like that. Rather than tailor the
| terminology to different environments, the person just
| chooses the "safe" term all the time.
| skyyler wrote:
| When was the last time you were in China? I'm curious
| about this self-censoring you're talking about. Did you
| observe it personally?
| kossae wrote:
| There are 10s if not 100s of articles on it, and even a
| paper written about it:
| https://as.nyu.edu/content/dam/nyu-
| as/politics/documents/The.... One does not have to be in
| China or observe it personally to know of its existence.
| skyyler wrote:
| Okay, so from the one you linked:
|
| >Respondents who are the most highly educated, have the
| highest number of daily posts on social media, and spend
| the most time on social media, appear to self censor
| criticisms of the government on social media more than
| they self censor praise of the government on social
| media. Other respondents do not appear to self-censor
| criticism of the government on social media. However, my
| findings are severely limited by my small sample size.
|
| I was actually asking for accounts of firsthand
| experience, not ideological slop.
| kube-system wrote:
| That is the origin of the phrase, but it has since
| entered colloquial vernacular... as pretty much all terms
| used on social media do.
| catigula wrote:
| I haven't seen that, I find it strange.
| kube-system wrote:
| You're wouldn't be the first adult to be unfamiliar with
| slang. Language spreads socially.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| The word filters must adapt pretty soon. So we'll get new
| terms.
| boromisp wrote:
| The next gen is semantic and sentiment filters, the age
| of wordlists is over.
| kortex wrote:
| And early Europeans avoided saying the name of the
| terrifying land mammal out of taboo / fear it would
| summon it, and instead referred to it as either "the
| brown one" or "wild animal" (exact etymology is unclear
| which it was), giving us the word "bear", to the point
| where the "arktos" based word has been lost. Often times
| euphemisms stick.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bear#Etymology
| moralestapia wrote:
| Interesting. Link or something?
| mrtksn wrote:
| I provided some more details and a link here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43396911
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| At work we do this with DNA floating around in the ocean (have to
| track down all those nasty invasive crabs) but I wouldn't have
| guessed we could do this with the air around us as well. That's
| so cool.
|
| Maybe we should spin up an air-based version for the office to
| keep track of who's in coming to work the most
| faangguyindia wrote:
| More like who is sick a lot (sneezing and distributing dna on
| multiple surfaces in the blast radius)
| MostlyStable wrote:
| Yeah, eDNA is exactly what I thought of when I saw this.
| DecentShoes wrote:
| Jeff Bezos is probably already throwing millions of dollars at
| this in case it'll help him punish people for having a toilet
| break.
| Lanolderen wrote:
| Fart detector
| SpicyUme wrote:
| Do you think this would become doable by private citizens in
| the near future for a reasonable amount of money? I've been
| curious about how far upstream the sculpins are in our local
| streams. I've seen some in pretty small streams but looking for
| them typically involves standing still in very cold water for
| long enough to see them move.
| a_bonobo wrote:
| This is a slightly older paper, note that air environmental DNA
| now has progressed a lot, especially for species mapping.
|
| Here's a cool recent paper showing you can extract DNA of local
| species from spider webs, by sequencing DNA stuck to spider webs
| from next to a zoo
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S258900422...
| h1fra wrote:
| I have always wondered why DNA is an accepted evidence. It's so
| easy to contaminate a crime scene or bring someone else hair,
| skin cells, etc by mistake.
| rwmj wrote:
| In theory, you could do a "perfect crime" by going to a seedy
| part of town, picking up a dropped cigarette butt, and leaving
| it at the crime scene, framing someone else.
|
| In reality, criminals are angry, frightened, in a rush, high or
| stupid, and they make the most elementary mistakes, so DNA and
| fingerprints work just fine almost all the time. In like 99% of
| cases there's not much doubt about who did it, the main thing
| is to have a watertight case against them when they deny it.
| serf wrote:
| >so DNA and fingerprints work just fine almost all the time.
|
| except for all of those innocent folks that have had their
| lives ruined by that 'almost all the time' caveat, it's
| great!
|
| here's a report[0] that says something like 80% + of criminal
| forensic work has major mistakes within it.
|
| [0]:
| https://www.criminallegalnews.org/news/2024/may/15/report-
| fi...
| rwmj wrote:
| Quoting from that:
|
| _> At 100% of the 130 examinations analyzed, seized drug
| analysis was the examination with the highest percentage of
| Type 2 errors. It was followed by pediatric physical abuse
| (83% of cases had forensic errors with 22% having Type 2
| errors out of 60 cases analyzed), fire debris not including
| chemical analysis (78% of cases /38% Type 2 in 45 cases),
| bitemark comparison (77% of cases/73% Type 2 in 44),
| pediatric sexual abuse (72% of cases/34% Type 2 in 64),
| serology (68% of cases/26% Type 2 in 204), shoe/foot
| impressions (66% of cases/41% Type 2 in 32), DNA (64% of
| cases/14% Type 2 in 64), hair comparison (59% of cases/20%
| Type 2 in 143), and blood spatter (58% of cases/27% Type 2
| in 33)._
|
| Also this sample comes from cases where people were
| exonerated, which could cluster around poor quality police
| work in general. And is US-based where policing is all
| kinds of messed up.
| abecedarius wrote:
| When we're talking about quality of evidence, saying "in
| reality" is skipping to your conclusion. Are smart careful
| people rare among known criminals? Well, yes. What would you
| expect to see? https://www.econlib.org/archives/2015/02/the_w
| ittgenstei.htm...
| adolph wrote:
| > going to a seedy part of town, picking up a dropped
| cigarette butt, and leaving it at the crime scene
|
| I've sometimes conjectured collecting hair from barbershops
| and making a dusting bag that steadily fluffs out hairs to
| dirty up a crime scene. Maybe get some saliva from grocery
| store sample spoons.
| inetknght wrote:
| > _you could do a "perfect crime" by going to a seedy part of
| town, picking up a dropped cigarette butt, and leaving it at
| the crime scene, framing someone else_
|
| Framing someone else is not a perfect crime. A perfect crime
| finds no criminal, accused or convicted.
| UncleEntity wrote:
| Creating reasonable doubt as a backup plan in case your
| perfect caper isn't as perfect as you believe is just good
| practice.
|
| Rule 43(a) in the criminal procedures handbook IIRC.
| Ajay-p wrote:
| Because people believe it, and courts have accepted as fact
| that DNA evidence is infallible. Certainly there have been
| cases where DNA has been successfully challenged, but those are
| very rare. In the overwhelming number of cases where DNA
| evidence is present, it is a self-fulfilling prophecy for
| juries and judges.
|
| If there is DNA evidence that is almost a guilty verdict. It
| should be more closely scrutinized but not everyone is rich
| enough to afford a real defense.
| antiquark wrote:
| Reminds me of the case of David Butler.
|
| "Mr Butler has a rare skin condition, which means he sheds
| flakes of skin, leaving behind much larger traces of DNA than
| the average person. He worked as a taxi driver, and so it was
| possible for his DNA to be transferred from his taxi via money
| or another person, onto the murder victim."
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-19412819
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| So, DNA shedding basically?
| water-data-dude wrote:
| Well, that's going to make it harder to hide from the hunter-
| killer bots
| the__alchemist wrote:
| This article... keeps repeating phrases about criminals,
| authorities, safe-houses, solving crimes. Feels off. I was
| expecting this to focus on the lab techniques, feasibility,
| technical details. It jumps straight from forensic application
| details to results without the in-between. I think the in-between
| is the interesting part.
|
| It's as if they took the token sentence that goes in an abstract
| about potential applications, and turned it into the meat of the
| article.
|
| It sounds like they are using standard extraction kits, them
| analyzing with RT-PCR.
| 6d6b73 wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised that some some agencies
| *cough*Mosad*cough* are gathering DNA of leaders of all
| countries, and analyzing them, and potentially building
| bioweapons to target them. It looks like all you need to do is to
| get the HEPA filter from the room where the target was .
| tehjoker wrote:
| This sounds very expensive, of uncertain efficacy, and if you
| use an engineered organism, it will likely be detected if you
| use modified DNA.
|
| I accept an agency like Mosad or the CIA would attempt it
| though. CIA tried so many crazy schemes to try to kill or
| embarrass Castro and failed every time. Mosad loves balls to
| the walls evil schemes too, like the pagers. It would be one of
| those situations where they leave a stupid trace and everyone
| knows it's them and they are untouchable so they don't care and
| even enjoy the attention.
| Simon_O_Rourke wrote:
| If you know my mother in law, you don't need a DNA tester to know
| she's been in the restroom.
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| Anyone remember the movie Gattaca?
| jp57 wrote:
| Makes me wonder if dogs can smell your DNA.
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