General Chat

Has anybody took a dna test regarding ancesters? The reason being is they are finding war dead in Ypres Belguim, My wifes Grandfather was killed at Ypres 1914 but a body was never recovered, Likewise thousands of unfortunate souls, Maybe they can match up the dna with the present relatives, Give us your inputs. Philip arizona.

American Forces Press Service ROCKVILLE, Md. -- It seemed like a grand idea: Locate letters sent by Americans from the Korean War and withdraw DNA from the saliva on the envelopes. Then, you could try to match the DNA with samples from recovered remains. “We thought the stamps and envelopes would be a great source, because here’s something the guy licked and sent to his mother or his wife,” said Mitchell Holland, service laboratory chief with the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory here. “It’s something that will have his DNA on it. But we started doing some studies and found that handling, contaminants in the mail, contaminants in the glue and the age of the specimen led to very unreliable results. “Today, if you were to lick an envelope and send it through the mail, when we got it here, we’d be able to [DNA] type you. We’d get a clean profile. But for 50-year-old envelopes, that doesn’t work.” That’s not to say that Korean War or much older remains can’t be identified by their DNA. Although the most definitive DNA is found in the nucleus of human cells, DNA outside nuclei is more plentiful. It’s this second type -- mitochondrial DNA -- that Holland and some 25 other scientists and lab and computer specialists use to identify human remains -- often with spectacular success.

Philip, that article is from a miltary web site, : www.defenselink.mil/news/Jul1998/n07131998_9807132.html There are other sites. Since 1991, the lab has worked hand-in-hand with the Army’s Central Identification Laboratory in Honolulu, to identify the remains of Americans unaccounted for from the Vietnam War and earlier conflicts. As of this April, the lab had made 93 mitochondrial DNA matches: 72 cases from Southeast Asia, three from Korea, 15 from World War II -- and three from the Civil War. Bill

Thank you all for the inputs, Seems like from your comments that maybe someday we can match up most of our family deceased thus getting some closure for the familys concerned, Good luck to you all in our common searches Philip.