abraham lincoln''s dna

[...]... and studying the DNA from extremely tiny tissue samples, even a single cell There is probably more than enough of Abraham Lincoln’s DNA in the bone and hair to serve as a diagnostic sample, and it would be possible to extract it for study This is what prompted Dr Prockop to contact the museum He speculated that he would need only a small piece of one bone fragment to obtain enough DNA to look for mutations... by comparing DNA from a bone sample with DNA from the blood of a living relative unless one could locate a woman who was a direct descen- 12 s H I STO RY dant of Booth’s mother through an uninterrupted line of female relatives Starrs based his argument on the fact that to establish the familial connection, one would almost certainly have to analyze mitochondrial DNA, a special type of DNA, which, because... where we are heading PA R T 1 HISTORY Using DNA to Understand the Past President Lincoln with general George B McClellan and group of officers, Antietam, Maryland (Photo from Library of Congress American Memory Collection.) CHAPTER 1 Abraham Lincoln Did He Have Marfan Syndrome? Marfan Syndrome No one seems to know exactly how tall, but by all accounts Abraham Lincoln was an uncommonly tall man During... (chemical letter) in the human DNA sequence has been identified and placed in its proper place on one of the 23 chromosomes We have already sequenced the first billion bases, and the pace is accelerating Today, no gene can elude us Indeed, shortly after the completion of the consensus sequence (the 3,000,000,000 or so bits of DNA information that make up a haploid human genome, the DNA in an egg or sperm),... Victor Weedn, then chief of the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory and responsible for the largest DNA bank in the world We readily agreed that none of us had ever been asked to decide questions such as we now confronted Congressman John Porter (R-Illinois) had become concerned about the possibility that the museum would authorize the study of Lincoln’s DNA, and he had formally requested that we... or the physicians who had attended him, were plausible Why not use a bit of Lincoln’s tissue held by the museum since his autopsy to create a DNA fingerprint, and then ask some of those families to submit a snippet of the bloody garments for DNA analysis? If the DNA profiles matched, it would confirm their claims, and it would identify the location of other samples for possible diagnostic studies Dr... department was being heavily criticized for the way it had organized its DNA bank to hold samples of all persons recruited into the military Since the major public concern was that the privacy of the samples would be violated, officials feared that testing Lincoln’s DNA would be seen as reinforcing that fear If testing Lincoln’s DNA were to reveal that he had Marfan syndrome, it would be an interesting... the Lincoln panel Descendants of John Wilkes Booth petitioned the Baltimore Circuit Court to permit them to exhume the remains to obtain a DNA sample in order to determine whether the body was really his This could be done by comparing DNA from the skeleton with DNA taken from the blood of living descendants The move to open the grave was instigated by Nathaniel Orlowek, a Maryland high school teacher,... have created a network of DNA databanks on convicted felons In less than a decade, every state has set up, or has committed to set up, these banks, all of which will use a standard DNA testing technology developed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation The public has paid little heed to this extraordinary development How long will it be before the state routinely collects a DNA sample for identification... held the remains of Nicholas II and his family What impact has that had on contemporary Russian society and on the Orthodox Church? DNA evidence is having a profound impact on how we deal with crime Today, the investigation of almost any crime assumes that there may be DNA evidence that will lead authorities to a suspect To illustrate, I recount how a few cat hairs on a coat became the critical evidence . His Genes 27 4. Old Bones: DNA and Skeletons 39 PART 2 Justice: The DNA Revolution in the Courts 5. DNA Detectives: The New DNA Evidence 53 6. Cold Hits: The Rise of DNA Felon Databanks 65 7