FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - Mar 3, 2008

Keuka's Boyer Lends Expertise to DNA Specimen Storage Study

KEUKA PARK, N.Y.—Freezing foods may keep them fresh longer, but freezing makes little difference where DNA specimen storage is concerned.  

David Boyer, coordinator of criminal justice programs for Keuka College’s Accelerated Studies for Adults Program (ASAP), and other Department of Defense (DoD) scientists conducting an eight-year study of DNA specimen storage methodology, found that room temperature is a safe storage option and that freezing samples is an unnecessary precaution.

Their findings were presented Feb. 22 by the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory (AFDIL) at the 2008 annual meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences in Washington, D.C.

Boyer came to Keuka from the Office of the Armed Forces Medical Examiner, a component of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (Rockville, Md.). The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP) is a tri-service agency of the DoD specializing in pathology consultation, education and research. AFIP maintains 22 subspecialty departments with a combined work force of more than 820 personnel, including more than 120 pathologists and other scientists. Boyer was the program manager for the DoD DNA Reference Specimen Collection Program and director of operations of the DoD DNA Repository from 1997 through 2006.

He created a test base of DNA samples stored at room temperature over several years. Laboratory tests on samples randomly selected from the inventory of more than 400,000 successfully confirmed room temperature as a viable storage method.

“The present DoD method for DNA sample storage uses freezers at minus 20 degrees Celsius,” explained Boyer. “The armed forces currently stores more than 5 million reference samples and the inventory increases about 300,000 annually. DNA samples are used for identification of war casualties of the U.S. military.”

According to Boyer, the study results may be used as the basis for program changes in the DoD DNA reference repository and save hundreds of thousands of dollars in long-term storage costs of DNA samples. They may also be used by criminal justice agencies across the U.S. in their approach to compliance with legislated convicted felon DNA data-basing.

“U.S. criminal justice agencies that deal with convicted felons are required to participate in CODIS (Combined DNA Index System), a national database run by the FBI that keeps DNA profiles on convicted felony offenders,” said Boyer. “The CODIS database allows police agencies to submit DNA profiles of unidentified suspects obtained from evidence in unsolved investigations for comparison to known, convicted offenders, to attempt to find a match and identify their suspects. It’s up to the agency how it stores its DNA samples, and a lot of agencies use freezers.”

The collaborative AFDIL study is scheduled for publication upon completion of the peer review process.

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Office of Communications, Keuka College, Keuka Park, New York 14478

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