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Safeguarding Forensic Dna Reference Samples With Nullomer Barcodes, Jayita Goswami, Michael C. Davis, Tim Andersen, Abdelkrim Alileche, Greg Hampikian

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Unintended transfer of biological material containing DNA is a concern to all laboratories conducting PCR analysis. While forensic laboratories have protocols in place to reduce the possibility of contaminating casework samples, there is no way to detect when a reference sample is mislabeled as evidence, or contaminates a forensic sample. Thus there is public concern regarding the safeguarding of DNA submitted to crime labs. We demonstrate a method of introducing an internal amplification control to reference samples, in the form of a nullomer barcode which is based upon sequences absent or rare from publically accessible DNA databases. The detection of …