Identify People With Their DNA Using Software.

Software is designed to run on the MinION. It’s an instrument, size of a credit card that pulls the strands of DNA through its microscopic pores and read out sequences of nucleotides, or the DNA letters A, T, C, and G. Yaniv Erlich, from the Columbia University in the United States said that this method opens up new ways to use off-the-shelf technology to benefit the society.

This device has made possible for the researchers to study about bacteria and viruses. But it’s limited to humans only because of its high error-rate and large sequence gaps. Though, researchers have found out the new way to use the MinION and plenty of human genetic data now online to verify the identity of people.  At first, researchers used MinION to sequence random strings of DNA, by which they picked individual variants, which are nucleotides that vary from person to person and makes them unique. These tests showed that the process can identify an individual’s identity after cross-checking between 60 and 300 variants. Sophie Zaailjer, from New York genome centre in the United States said that using their method, by only few DNA reads figure outs the match to an individual in the database.

By: Srishti Sharma

Content: Hindustan Times