SNP Technology Focuses on Terror Victims' IDs

Graphic: Courtesy of Orchid Biosciences SNP-based identifications are possible with fragments one-fourth the size needed for other methods. A well-lit, chrome-and-steel room hums as a robot uses multiple arms to carry 384-well plates from their platforms into readers, where an "SNPscope"--which has the capacity to read just a few pixels of fluorescence--captures data from the entire plate in six minutes and automatically transfers it to computer screens. A half-dozen researchers and ana

Written byLarry Hand

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A well-lit, chrome-and-steel room hums as a robot uses multiple arms to carry 384-well plates from their platforms into readers, where an "SNPscope"--which has the capacity to read just a few pixels of fluorescence--captures data from the entire plate in six minutes and automatically transfers it to computer screens. A half-dozen researchers and analysts, led by Robert Giles, executive director of the identity genomics group at Orchid Cellmark's Dallas, Texas, laboratory, pore over the data. Their mission: Increase the odds of identifying remains of people killed in the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attack that brought down the World Trade Center towers in New York.

Orchid Cellmark, a business unit of Orchid BioSciences in Princeton, NJ, joined the massive forensics effort officially in August, after months of tests and trials passed muster with the review board overseeing the work managed by the New York City Medical Examiner's (ME) Office. That office's ...

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