Scientists Find Way To Combat Forged DNA

An anonymous reader writes to tell us that while scientists may have learned how to forge DNA, it appears that a group of Israeli scientists has created a DNA authentication method that is able to distinguish between real and faked DNA samples. "The new process was tested on natural and artificial samples of blood, saliva and touched surfaces, with complete success, Nucleix said. It also identifies 'contaminated' DNA that has been mixed with two or more samples."

Forged but not duplicated?

[VeNoM0619]

This helps prevent the issue of "artificially" generated DNA that was talked about earlier. But only 1 of 2 methods have been solved. What about replicated/duplicated DNA which isn't using other combined DNA?

Either way, like I said before, technology is an arms race. They have authentication for simple forgery, but wait for the next big thing that will fool these tests. Good for them though at least :)

Full disclosure?

[hansraj]

Dan Frumkin, the lead researcher of the group that created a way to "fake DNA" is the founder of Nucleix, the company selling the test for such forgery.

Not that this has any bearing whatsoever on the quality of the research behind all this, but still one would think that such information was relevant to this news.

Re:And came the authentication authentication...

[goombah99]

Well in this case the group that developed the test was also the group that showed it was possible to spoof existing tests. and it's a commercial technology: they sell the test kits. So it was totally in their interest to show why you need to buy their test.

But also in this case it benefits the Cat and not the mouse. If someone tries to spoof the existing test and they don't guess right in how to spoof it -- e.g. they try to evade the spoof detector, and don't anticipate there is a new spoof detector evasion detector ) then it sort of nails them for premeditation of the crime.

Re:Full disclosure?

[Anonymous Coward]

That, and pretty much everything else in the AFP article was already covered in the NY Times article [nytimes.com] mentioned in the earlier Slashdot story on forging DNA.

Disclosed in the News

[LionKimbro]

I don't see any foul play -- the article specifically says just this:

Israeli scientists find way to combat forged DNA [google.com] -- very first line reads: "Israeli scientists have developed new technology to fight biological identity theft after realising that DNA evidence found at crime scenes can be easily falsified."

Then further on: "Elon Ganor is CEO and co-founder of Nucleix, an Israeli company specialised in DNA analysis that conducted the research."

Further on: "To combat the practice, Nucleix has developed a DNA authentication method that distinguishes between real and fake samples."

The article is very clear that the discoverers were also the inventors of the counter-technology.