PCR amplification improvements.

[Shylock]

But I think Henry Lee said that about six years ago. DNA technology has advanced considerably since then.

Contamination then, is still contamination now. It never changes.

 

[Shylock]

I did not realize that JonBenet's fingernails were quite long enough to reach that far in order to scratch him and leave his dna under her fingernails. How is it he deposited his blood in her panties that night if he was in Taiwan? Or do you claim that he traveled from Taiwan to Boulder? What does Mr. Gai do for a living? And how is it that he lives in Taiwan when the panties were manufactured by a Taiwanese firm that owns a factory in Vietnam?

FACT - JonBenet scratched NO ONE, not even herself. There was nothing under her fingernails.
FACT - There is NO BLOOD in JonBenet's panties except her own.

Perhaps Mr. Gai travels in his job between Taiwan and Viet Nam.
Personally, I think there is a better chance that the DNA came from the point of sale where Joe Blow sneezed on the package, or examined them with sweaty hands, or maybe even took them home and tried them on.
Do you know if Mr. Blow is a cross-dresser, Toth?

 

[BlueCrab]

Contamination then, is still contamination now. It never changes.

The contamination never changed, but the methods used to determine who donated the DNA from that contaminated specimen has changed and continues to change and become more sophisticated.

For instance, even without knowing who an individual is, we can now determine the ethnic background of the donor from the DNA he left behind at a crime scene. Who knows what's just around the corner as DNA technology, which is only 20 years old, further improves.

JMO

 

[Toth]

Contamination of the fingernail dna, contamination of the first blood spot dna and contamination of the second blood spot dna. All on tests performed in separate labs several months apart. Yet it is the same contamination.

 

[Shylock]

Contamination of the fingernail dna, contamination of the first blood spot dna and contamination of the second blood spot dna. All on tests performed in separate labs several months apart. Yet it is the same contamination.

Yes Toth, but what you forgot was that ALL the samples were collected in the same lab--Meyer's. Meyer didn't have the knowledge to know that he should have used a separate clipper for each fingernail, or even a clean clipper. If scissors were used to cut the blood swatches out of the panties they were probably dirty too.
Don't be surprised if the DNA came from the janitor who cleans Meyer's lab at night.

 

[tipper]

We don't know how clean the clipper was or wasn't. ST implied that it might not be but offered no concrete evidence to back that up.

 

[Ivy]

Just think...if the "intruder" had left even one complete body cell behind, he could be cloned (theoretically anyway), and when the cloned individual reached adulthood, we'd know what the intruder looked like. My bet would be he'd be the spitting image of Sum Yung Gai or the lab janitor. The cloning method of identifying the killer sounds absurd and farfetched...but so is trying to identify the killer by running a bogus DNA sample through the database.

Sure seems odd to me that if JonBenet scratched the "intruder," all that got under her fingernails was degraded DNA and no skin or blood cells, and that the only DNA the "intruder" left in her panties was also degraded and its source unidentifiable. Was it from saliva? Mucous? Was it a combination of both from say, a sneeze?

That reminds me...anyone have a reliable non-Lin Wood source stating that the fingernail and panties DNA are from the same person?

 

[Shylock]

We don't know how clean the clipper was or wasn't. ST implied that it might not be but offered no concrete evidence to back that up.

We know positively from ST that the same clipper was used on ALL her fingernails.

 

[Shylock]

That reminds me...anyone have a reliable non-Lin Wood source stating that the fingernail and panties DNA are from the same person?

Lou Smit has said something to that effect. Not that we should trust anything technical Smit says. He doesn't have the ability to understand basic electricity (which will NOT turn your skin blue as he thinks)--so he wouldn't have a prayer of understanding DNA technology.