DNA Consultants Home of the DNA Fingerprint

Lorton, VA – February 13, 2012 – Bode Technology (Bode), a leading provider of forensic DNA services, announced today the acquisition of Chromosomal Laboratories, Inc., a leading provider of DNA testing for immigration and private paternity.

By adding this expertise to its portfolio of service offerings, Bode will utilize its vast international and domestic presence to provide best inclass immigration paternity and private paternity testing to clients worldwide. Bode is a whollyowned subsidiary of SolutionPoint International, Inc.

“Chromosomal Laboratories has established an excellent reputation through its focus on clientservice, fast turnaround and high quality,” said Barry Watson, CEO & President of Bode. “Their focus on immigration and paternity testing complements Bode’s strengths in forensic casework and databasing, and enables us to expand our domestic and international offerings. With the increased use of DNA for immigration purposes and recent changes in the marketplace, we see opportunities for significant growth.”

“Having admired and respected Bode Technology as a competitor in forensics for years, I am extremely excited and proud that Chromosomal has this opportunity to join their team,” said Vladimir Bolin, CEO and co-founder of Chromosomal Laboratories, Inc. “The ethics, vision,resources and leadership of the Bode team is beyond reproach, and sets a solid foundation for Chromosomal’s technical and market leadership in the coming years.”

Chromosomal Laboratories, founded in 2004, maintains AABB accreditation for relationship testing activities and ISO 17025 accreditation in forensics. It provides relationship and forensic services both in the United States and internationally. Operating out of its state-of-the-art facility in Phoenix, AZ, Chromosomal Laboratories has provided services for samples from every state in the United States and approximately one hundred countries.

DNA Analysis from Fingerprints

Fingerprints are routinely used in crime scene investigations to characterize individuals associated with forensic evidence. However, fingerprints are sometimes smeared or incomplete and cannot be interpreted or used for further analysis. The use of mtDNA for the identification of fingerprints would be valuable in forensic investigations. The research department at The Bode Technology Group has developed a method to obtain mtDNA from processed fingerprints on both non-porous and porous substrates.

The research department at The Bode Technology Group is currently developing methods to obtain STRs from processed latent fingerprints. Many of the same substrates and chemical processes used for mtDNA recovery will be tested for STRs. Updates on our research will be posted periodically on the company's website.

BOOK DESCRIPTION:  Americans have learned in elementary school that their country was founded by a group of brave, white, largely British Christians. Modern reinterpretations recognize the contributions of African and indigenous Americans, but the basic premise has persisted. This groundbreaking study fundamentally challenges the traditional national storyline by postulating that many of the initial colonists were actually of Sephardic Jewish and Muslim Moorish ancestry. Supporting references include historical writings, ship manifests, wills, land grants, DNA test results, genealogies, and settler lists that provide for the first time the Spanish, Hebrew, Arabic, and Jewish origins of more than 5,000 surnames, the majority widely assumed to be British. By documenting the widespread presence of Jews and Muslims in prominent economic, political, financial and social positions in all of the original colonies, this innovative work offers a fresh perspective on the early American experience.

Seven years in the making, Jews and Muslims in British Colonial America was published by McFarland Publishers on February 21. It is a followup to the same authors' When Scotland Was Jewish (2007). A third study on crypto-Jews and crypto-Muslims in English and Welsh history under way will complete a series begun by Hirschman and Yates ten years ago.

Read a notice from Rutgers News service from October 2010.

Jews and Muslims in British Colonial America   A Genealogical History by Elizabeth Caldwell Hirschman and Donald N. Yates  

• Price: $45.00
  
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An Index to Jews and Muslims in British Colonial America   Lookup tool for Hirschman and Yates' book Jews and Muslims in British Colonial America  

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A few years ago, I retired from a career as a police detective. Sadly, in retirement, I became a junkie. Yes, I freely admit I've been a genealogy junkie for a number of years now. Recently, my insatiable habit has been fed by a newly discovered connection, that of the books authored by two stalwart researchers Elizabeth Hirschman and Donald Panther-Yates. First, there was When Scotland was Jewish. And now, I've just finished my first read through of their latest endeavor, Jews and Muslims in British Colonial America.

As a person addicted to family history, I know I share a frustration with like minded souls in that I've not had the time or means to run down every lead or theory that I'd developed while gazing at family trees, naming patterns, ports of emigration, and maps of migration. Suddenly, I've found two fellow travelers, Hirschman and Yates, who have not only done light years worth of investigation for me, they have actually validated many of the theories I'd developed on my own.

When Scotland was Jewish was an eye opening sojourn through the lands of many of my European forefathers. Jews and Muslims in British Colonial America, on the other hand, has brought it all closer to home. It is nothing short of amazing.

I completed my first read through in two sittings and found so many families I recognized from my own amateurish sifting, including: Van Cortland, Van Resselaer, Abrahamsen, Coffin (Cohen), Giles, Gardner, Van Sandt, Ash, Moore, Yeamans, Davis, Swan, and Vann. The list is almost endless. If you are like me, an obsessed archaeologist, rooting around in your past, Jews and Muslims in British Colonial America is your book. I can only hope the next offering of these two authors is as enlightening!

--George Collord Mount Shasta, California

Describing himself as "a cultural geographer by training," Peter McCormick contributed an interesting chapter mentioning Melungeons to a recent volume of political science and anthropological essays. Titled Border Crossings:  Transnational Americanist Anthropology, the collection is edited by Kathleen Sue Fine-Dare and Steven Rubinson and published by the University of Nebraska Press (2009). It may be the first time a practicing academic historian has committed to a considered opinion on the subject since Melungeons first appeared on the radar of Americanists with Price's "tri-racial isolate" definition in the 1950s.

McCormick has a Ph.D. from the University of Oklahoma and is an associate professor of Southwest studies and Native American and indigenous studies at Fort Lewis College in Colorado. His most recent work has been on the autogeography and autohistory of his extended family in the plains, the Southwest, Appalachia, Iberia, South America and the Mediterranean.

Here's how he describes Melungeons (p. 286):

The Melungeon population of Appalachia has been the subject of a tremendous amount of interest and controversy lately. A consensus appears to be building that this population, once thought to be small, is rather large and is a result of the mixing of Iberian and Middle Eastern settlers who had been part of Spanish and English trading parties with the indigenous population of the American Southeast. Later migrations into the Piedmont and upper South by refugees of the Inquisition (Sephardic Jews and Moors) in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries supplemented this population (see Hirschman 2005; Kennedy and Kennedy 1997). Our families were of this mixture.

Professor McCormick goes on to write about his personal Melungeon genealogy:

Sephardic names include Cuba, Pillo Monnis Callahin, Jorgas, Nassi, Khanadi, Rosa, David, Baez, Santos and Gascon. The families that were at one point crypto Jews include Kieffer, Mayabb, Dula D'Aultun, Baigne and Ball.  Our Melungeon families are Sizemore, Yates, Brashears, Collins, Lucas, Noel, Bass, Kennedy, Davis, Nash, Mullins, Center and Carrico. The family names on the Miller-Guion and Dawes rolls include Tunnell, Mabe, Waller, Yates and Doolin.

McCormick's testimony and evaluation of the evidence, together with his willingness to name names and self-identify as a Melungeon in academia, are important signs that the Melungeon thesis advanced by Kennedy and further documented by Hirschman and others is winning the day.

We thank McCormick for his part in bringing the true story of Jewish and Middle Eastern ancestry in Appalachia to a wider attention.

Review of Border Crossings
For anthropologists and social scientists working in North and South America, the past few decades have brought considerable change as issues such as repatriation, cultural jurisdiction, and revitalization movements have swept across the hemisphere. Today scholars are rethinking both how and why they study culture as they gain a new appreciation for the impact they have on the people they study. Key to this reassessment of the social sciences is a rethinking of the concept of borders: not only between cultures and nations but between disciplines such as archaeology and cultural anthropology, between past and present, and between anthropologists and indigenous peoples.

Border Crossings is a collection of fourteen essays about the evolving focus and perspective of anthropologists and the anthropology of North and South America over the past two decades. For a growing number of researchers, the realities of working in the Americas have changed the distinctions between being a “Latin,” “North,” or “Native” Americanist as these researchers turn their interests and expertise simultaneously homeward and out across the globe.

Melungeon DNA Studies

The sequencing of the human genome capped off the 20th century's tireless search for genetic causes for all diseases.  But epigenetics is the hot new science now. Dr. Anne Marie Fine, a Scottsdale physician, certainly thinks so. Dr. Fine spoke in Paris recently on Epigenetics and Beauty and next month will present a paper called "Dining at the Epigenetic Cafe" in Monte Carlo, Monaco at the largest European physicians' anti-aging conference.  In June she will present a paper entitled "Epigenetics and the Autosomal DNA of Human Populations: Clinical Perspectives and Personal Genome Tests at the University of British Colombia, Canada," with Donald Yates, principal investigator at DNA Consultants, along with participating in a 90 minute colloquium on epigenetics, autosomal DNA and ethnic identity.  Clearly, epigenetics is stealing the show!

From the Fine Center for Natural Medicine News, here is how Dr. Fine describes epigenetics and its promise:

"Epi" literally means "above" so epigenetics are the influences from above that affect the DNA. Epigenetics refers to modifications to DNA and chromatin, the protein scaffolding that surrounds the DNA, that persist from one cell division to the next, despite a lack of change in the underlying DNA sequence.  So the "epigenome" refers to the interface between the environment and the genome.  This is the basis behind the new science of epigenetics- how the environment affects the cellular DNA. Cells are bathed continuously in a sea of changing environmental conditions.  This means the epigenome is dynamic and responsive to environmental signals especially during development, but also throughout life.  It is becoming increasingly apparent that stress, environmental chemicals, and nutrient deficiencies are some of the biggest factors that promote epigenetic changes to the DNA.  In addition, some of these changes in gene expression persist long after the exposure has stopped.  What this means is that these changes can transcend generations.

It is becoming clear that a wide variety of common illnesses, behaviors, and other health conditions may have at least a partial epigenetic etiology, including cancer, respiratory, cardiovascular, reproductive, and autoimmune diseases, neurological disorders such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, and other cognitive dysfunctions, psychiatric illnesses, obesity and diabetes, infertility and sexual dysfunction.  Effectors of epigenetic changes include many agents, such as heavy metals, pesticides, tobacco smoke, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, hormones, radioactivity, viruses, bacteria, basic nutrients, and the social environment, including maternal care.  It has even been suggested that our thoughts and emotions can induce epigenetic changes.

"Incredibly, only about 2 percent of diseases can be attributed to locked-in single gene mutations," says Dr. Fine.  Most disease occurs as a complex interaction between genetic susceptibility and the environment.  This means, while there are genetic predispositions,  there are environmental triggers that actually start the disease, but also environmental factors that protect against developing the disease.   The key is to understand which factors promote disease, and avoid them, and which protect, and seek them out.  Our genetic makeup doesn't necessarily determine our biological fate.  "Genes may load the gun, but environment pulls the trigger," says Dr. Fine.

James Watson once said that the double helix contains a library of detailed information about all generations of our ancestry "if only we could read it." Combining epigenetics and the advances in autosomal DNA tests, we are beginning to read the whole of human medical, evolutionary and ethnic history, at least in outline form. 

Well, not completely. According to Larry Moran, a Professor in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Toronto, "We can say that only 90% of the human genome has been sequenced and the remaining 10% falls into 357 gaps scattered throughout the genome." Read all the numbers at Sandwalk - Strolling with a Biochemist.

The labels used to describe Americans of African descent mark the movement of a people from the slave house to the White House. Today, many are resisting this progression by holding on to a name from the past: "black."

For this group — some descended from U.S. slaves, some immigrants with a separate history — "African-American" is not the sign of progress hailed when the term was popularized in the late 1980s. Instead, it's a misleading connection to a distant culture.

According to a news report in the current issue of Science Magazine, four massive volcanic eruptions in the tropics caused a sudden cooling of the earth between 1275 and 1300. The report is titled:

A Volcanic Trigger for Europe's Little Ice Age