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Project:Sex typing with amelogenin: Difference between revisions
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Project:Sex typing with amelogenin (view source)
Revision as of 16:37, 26 April 2012
, 26 April 2012Updates now that this is mostly working
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(Updates now that this is mostly working) |
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=== More results === | |||
We've done several more tests since March 22, most of which seem to work. The major problem seems to be quality of the extracted DNA: PCR product is frequently quite faint. As of April 26, 2012, DNA extraction technique will be the main focus for the amelogenin test (and for genetic testing of human DNA in general). | |||
== Future Work == | == Future Work == | ||
Given that we get this working, it should provide a basis for further experiments. As far as I understand it, it is possible to apply this sort of technique, with appropriate primers, to do detection of SNPs [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-nucleotide_polymorphism] opening up the possibility of testing for something common like [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RHD_%28gene%29 RHD] or [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melanocortin_1_receptor MC1R] alleles, and perhaps providing a resource for people who want to genetically test themselves for rarer things a la Katherine Aull (but it is much simpler and cheaper to get such tests run commercially, and there is a difficult ethical case to answer about providing genetic testing without proper expert medical support and interpretation of results). | Given that we get this working, it should provide a basis for further experiments. As far as I understand it, it is possible to apply this sort of technique, with appropriate primers, to do detection of SNPs [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-nucleotide_polymorphism] opening up the possibility of testing for something common like [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RHD_%28gene%29 RHD] or [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melanocortin_1_receptor MC1R] alleles, and perhaps providing a resource for people who want to genetically test themselves for rarer things a la Katherine Aull (but it is much simpler and cheaper to get such tests run commercially, and there is a difficult ethical case to answer about providing genetic testing without proper expert medical support and interpretation of results). | ||
We can also test for nonhuman DNA, i.e. non-genetic diseases caused by viruses or bacteria; test the provenance of various foods (fish in general and sashimi in particular would seem like a good option); or attempt DNA fingerprinting to identify particular people (I haven't looked into this but would guess it involves a few different primers targeting highly-variable portions of the genome). | |||
