AST May 2018 Magazine Issue Volume 23 | Page 36

The Mystery Solved
Volume 23
May 2018 Edition
The National Biodefence and Countermeasure Center , located in Fort Detrick MD , was the place where S & T researchers did additional sequencing of the mummy ’ s DNA and confirmed FBI ’ s results . Photo by NBACC .
“ The novelty of this work is in demonstrating that nuclear DNA can now be recovered from the worst of the worst specimens – Egyptian mummies , in this case ,” said Dr . Irwin .
“ If successful , these methods could become part of FBI ’ s routine DNA casework .”

The Mystery Solved

Egyptian governor , not to his wife .
“ Nick ’ s team was able to find with high sensitivity as many pieces of DNA that still had enough length to support sequencing and then the bioinformatic analyses that needed to be performed ,” said Dr . Burans .
“ This project was a first step towards substantially advancing the laboratories ’ capabilities with respect to DNA recovery from the most limited and degraded specimens ,” said Dr . Irwin .
For the Museum , it would mean the laboratories could finally confirm the identity of the mummy ’ s head .
Governor Djehutynakht ’ s artifacts , which are considered to be the largest burial assemblage ever recovered from that time period , are currently on display at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts .
After many years of wondering whose head explorers found , the Museum , S & T and the FBI proved that the nuclear DNA from the 4,000-year-old mummy belongs to the Ancient
A molecular biologist at the NBACC forensic laboratory examines a DNA sample in front of the Illumina HiSeq high capacity DNA sequencing instrument . Photo by NBACC .
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