They sure made time with osama
They are sure to have had a top=flight forensic team ready
for the bastard’s corpse as soon as it could be delivered.
Most news sources I’ve read said they used face recognition technology to identify Bin Laden. I’m sure they took sufficient forensic samples for a DNA verification, either from older official samples, or compared to relatives, but the CSI magic DNA technique ™ has not suddenly become real.
This did happen very quickly. ABC reported that his DNA was compared to that of his late sister:
I don’t know how much time is needed for what DNA testing method. All the same I’m reminded of that scene from the Simpsons episode Who Shot Mr. Burns? where a lab technician tells Chief Wiggum that DNA tests take 3 to 5 weeks - and changes that to “3 to 5 seconds” after Wiggum gives him a carton of cigarettes. Of course the episode also says that the government uses pennies to collect everyone’s DNA, so I might not take that as factual.
It takes weeks to get results back because labs have large backlogs of work, and your test doesn’t go to the front of the line just because you really want it to.
However, in this case I imagine strings can be pulled to get the test moved to the front of the line.
True. I also wonder if the nature of this test made the process any faster: the goal was to prove that the donors of the two samples were related.
I believe that DNA tests aren’t actually that time consuming, and a 24 hour turnaround is entirely possible if the person doing the test has absolutely nothing else to do. Week(s)-long waits for DNA tests in real-life crime labs have more to do with paperwork, backlogs, and lack of funding. Identifying Osama bin Laden would be about as high-priority as it gets. I can’t seem to dig up a good cite, though.
You can do a geno-typing using a SNP micro array in a few hours. This won’t give you his complete genetic sequence, but will look at several hundred thousand locations where there is often variability between people. This is probably overkill and there may be even simpler techniques if all you want is an ID.
The main reason DNA testing takes so long is backlog. But I bet Osama was moved to the front of the queue.
Is part of the length of time it usually takes due to the fact that you’re usually dealing with a very small amount of tissue from which to extract the DNA, so you have to allow enough time for polymerase chain reaction to create enough copies to analyze? If you have an entire corpse at your disposal (so to speak), does that mean PCR is not needed?
What makes that especially funny is the Macintosh ding and the surname SIMPSON filling the screen. Even CSI computers are a little more obtuse with data readouts. Lots of sources are saying that the DNA test has already been competed, and one day turnaround is not unexpected for a very dedicated lab – I don’t think the Feds sent Bin Laden’s samples to the most overworked major city lab, to wait in line behind 100 other paternity tests, 500 corpse ID’s, and 200 cancer screenings. (Hyperbole for joke purposes only) But if there’s a source that said (or implied) it was verified in a couple of minutes, right on the battlefield – even if that source is the White House press secretary – they’re probably cut some steps and time out of the calculation to make it easier for people to understand. Or they’re idiots. Yes a quick PCR device can probably scan for major markers in just a few hours, and they may have that locally available, but a rigorous determination is what you’d want, to avoid looking like an idiot when you have to say later, “Uhm … oops … wasn’t him.” And that does take time.
[ETA]
It takes me minutes to collect my thoughts, so I don’t mean to repost what others have said. So, yeah, what the last 5 people said, is what I’m saying.
It depends on exactly what tests are being done. But PCR only takes about an hour, so it’s not a significant time saving over trying to digest and extract DNA from pounds of tissue. If you’re doing RFLP or some other Southern blotting technique, you might not do PCR (or you might), but generally speaking, you probably would. I don’t know for sure - my knowledge of forensic techniques is a few years out of date, and I’m sure they’ve moved on significantly since then.
News reports said the probability of a match was 99.9 percent, which actually implies to me a fairly quick-and-dirty analysis. A full genetic analysis would no doubt yield a much greater probability. But coupled with face recognition plus biometric analysis, plus other evidence, even a quick analysis would amount to a virtual certainty. The odds of someone being that genetically close to bin Laden, while also resembling him so closely physically, would be extremely small.
Yes, I thought it was awfully quick too. If someone rapes your sister it will take three months to see anything out of the local crime lab. Everything was ready to get this one done ASAP. They also had DNA models of OBL’s family ready for comparison. Good thing it all worked out.
Way back when I was in high school (when PCR was brand-spanking-new), we did our own DNA fingerprints in a day, and a lot of that was just waiting for the next class to get the results. Actually, come to think of it, it might have been two days (one to do the PCR, and one to do the gel electrophoresis), but still, most of that was just waiting. Between technological progress, higher funding, and trained professionals, I wouldn’t be at all surprised at a turnaround within an hour or so.
There’s doubtless some uncertainty introduced by the fact that we don’t actually have his DNA to compare to, just his relatives. I mean, if he had a brother we didn’t know about, we wouldn’t be able to distinguish between them, and even for someone other than an immediate relative, there’d at least be a chance that he’d look close enough to be mistaken for a brother.
When we did PCR and gel electrophoresis in Biology lab, it was a done deal within the 3 hour class time. I doubt we used the very newest, most accurate techniques, but it was close enough for government work. Er…so to speak.
Yes, the long waits are because of backlog at the lab, not because the process itself takes 3 months.
I could do it in my lab in a day. The delay comes from backlog.
Why in the world did they need his sister’s brain for a DNA test? Wouldn’t a blood sample do?
Jeez guys you are overlooking the obvious.
They sent the sample to the CSI lab in Las Vegas. they had the answer back in time to wrap the case by the end of the episode.
Those CSI guys crank a full DNA analysis in about 15 minutes or less.
Red blood cells carry no DNA, white cells do but are relatively scarce.
Every cell in a brain tissue sample has DNA.
It actually took about seventeen minutes. We got the material in just before ten, but Mickey was on a cig break, so we got started about 10:15, then three of the techs (we call 'em Buffy, Jody and Sissy) had to interrupt with pics of last Saturday night. But, yeah, we got it don… Oh, crap. I wasn’t supposed to say anything.