A Western University researcher is hoping to add another tool to the police crime-fighting arsenal -- pollen DNA.
Bogumil Karas, an assistant professor at Western’s Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry, has been working in collaboration with researchers from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia and the University of Western Australia to improve the study of pollen and other spores. Their work has the potential to link suspects to specific crime scenes and track the movement of narcotics.
Through their research, the team of scientists developed a new method to efficiently capture DNA from pollen grains using synthetic biology techniques. The new method allows scientists to rapidly extract minute amounts of pollen DNA and propagate it, which can lead to improved forensic analyses.
"Current methods allow researchers to narrow down the origin of the pollen to a country,” said Karas. “The hope is that with the method we are developing, it should be possible to narrow the region of pollen origin down to a province or state.”
Because different plant species are native or restricted to a certain area, scientists use pollen to identify their place of origin. With the new method, forensic analyses that depend on accurate classification of pollen grains would be greatly improved, Karas explained.
“Most of our experimental designs are inspired by processes that are naturally occurring in nature. We are just trying to make them more efficient,” Karas said. “We hope to revolutionize forensic palynology.”
The research has already gained the support of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the research arm of the United States Department of Defense. The agency has kicked in $503,193 USD in funding toward the continued research project.