Word: labs
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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There are other private and university labs that do forensic DNA testing of pets and farm animals, but none are as big or as busy. The Davis lab boasts the largest database of domesticated-animal DNA in the U.S.--including samples from 1.5 million horses, 25,000 dogs and a barn full of other species, from cows and goats to llamas and alpacas. Last year it fielded roughly 60 criminal cases, plus another 40 or so from insurance companies (typically trying to identify animals that caused property damage) and private citizens (usually wanting to know if the remains found...
Getting answers from animal samples is often easier than extracting them from humans. Many pets are fastidious groomers, and the saliva covering the fur they shed makes it a far better source of DNA than snippets of human hair. The lab has also developed reagents specific to certain animals, making it harder for a sample to be hopelessly contaminated by, say, a scientist's sneeze...
...fact, the lab is so good at what it does that it may end up getting less work, not more. Forensic scientist Teri Kun remembers one customer who used to regularly send cattle samples seized from rustlers; these days he tends to get confessions as soon as suspects learn DNA tests will be ordered. For the same reason, it's rare than an animal- abuse case referred to the lab ever makes it to court. "Once you have the DNA analysis," says Wictum, "people end up pleading...
...abused and refer to the people who do it as "serial killers." Kun, a mother of two, finds cases involving children as victims particularly difficult. "When I got samples for a case where a 6-year-old was mauled by dogs, I was glad I was alone in the lab," says...
...chills of mid-October brought Kleinschmidt’s Green Mountain Club work to a close. When she returned from the trail, she dusted off her degree in biology and mind, brain, and behavior, and spent the fall and early winter in Boston working in a neurobiology lab at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center...