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Uh, today is Thursday.

It is now day 68 since Nancy Guthrie literally just um vanished from her home in Tucson, Arizona.

Uh, so many of you have asked me more about the DNA, what could be happening behind the scenes with the DNA testing.

Remember, there was DNA found inside NY’s home that investigators said did not belong to Nancy or anyone in her family or her inner circle, which which um was a good thing.

I mean, it could belong to the suspect.

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The problem is uh as as you know, if you’ve been following the case, the DNA is mixed and it seems they’re having problems sorting that out behind the scenes.

In this episode, you’re going to hear from a renowned DNA expert and genealogologist, CeCe Moore.

uh and she has some really interesting things to say about what could be happening uh to try to sort out this DNA issue.

First of all, why she believes they should be going back to the crime scene even now, even after the crime scene has been cleared and what they should be doing there.

She explains that.

She also talks about this new machine that is coming out next year.

Uh and I know next year seems like a long way away, but these DNA technologies advance so quickly.

She explains how this new machine could really help with this DNA issue uh that that she suspects is happening behind the scenes with the Nancy Guthrie case.

Um she also talks about why she would urge Savannah Guthrie to plead with some of these DNA companies like ancestry.

com.

uh why she thinks someone like Savannah should be going to them because they don’t open up their databases to law enforcement, which a lot of people don’t realize, which she’s going to explain in this episode.

Um, but it’s just it’s a fascinating conversation because again, it’s it’s such a complicated world when it comes to DNA and it’s emerging so quickly and there are all these private companies now getting involved.

Um, and there’s a lot happening behind the scenes that could really help advance the Nancy Guthrie case, and Cece is going to explain that.

I’m joined now by genetic genealogologist, uh, Cece Moore.

Uh, CeCe, it’s it’s always nice to see you.

Uh, it’s been a while since I talked to you.

I had you on my show um kind of towards the beginning of the Nancy Guthrie investigation and things just got so crazy.

I really wanted to check back in with you because I was curious what you think is happening behind the scenes now with the DNA.

The latest I’ve heard is the sheriff said, you know, that there was still stuff happening behind the scenes with the DNA.

He hasn’t given a lot of specifics.

Um, what do you think? What What do you think is going on? I think that companies or a company that was planning to release a new mixture deconvolution software package has probably rushed that.

You know how companies, especially tech companies, have a plan for the next year or so.

They say, “Oh, we’re going to do that third quarter next year.

” I suspect that that has been moved up to right now.

And it’s very possible that they are testing out different uh algorithms at the moment to see if they can deconvolute that complex mixture.

I fear that it’s the only thing they may have to work with right now.

I’m hoping that they are testing additional items from NY’s home.

That can take quite a while if you’ve collected dozens or hundreds of swabs or other materials.

Um because I, you know, as I’ve said, I can’t believe there wouldn’t be his DNA or their DNA at that crime scene.

Explain to me what you mean by that.

So, you think there’s a company that had some kind, this is the way I’m trying, some kind of new technology that was going to come out that because the Nancy Guthrie case is so uh high visibility, they would be moving that up.

Is that is that what you’re saying? Yeah, that’s my educated guess.

based on what the sheriff has said.

He said something about how, you know, they were rushing this.

He didn’t say what it was, but that is my guess because deconvolution is a huge part of forensic DNA analysis.

And there have been, you know, efforts to deconvolute on the STR side for decades.

and they have a lot of software packages that they can work with, but we’ve only been using snip testing for forensic samples since around 2018 and that means that it is lagging behind.

It wouldn’t be able to use the same types of software packages.

At Parabon, our biioinformatic scientists are really amazing with uh deconvolution, but they are sort of leading the pack there.

And I think there are a lot of efforts to be able to improve our ability because we run into that so often with sexual assaults or as the technology becomes more sensitive with transfer DNA, the ability to detect the tiniest amount of DNA that someone leaves behind really increases the likelihood you’re going to get a mixture, right? Like on a doorork knob for instance.

So to me that makes the most sense.

I don’t have any insider information that that’s what’s going on, but I know that uh Stray of Forensics, for example, in UC Santa Cruz is really groundbreaking and they have certain packages like that that they sell to the other labs that are doing forensic genetic genealogy work and creating those snip profiles.

Now, at Parabon, our expertise with mixture is on microarray.

So microarray is this snip chip where they put the DNA on there and it reads about 700,000 genetic markers across the genome.

Those snips, those single nucleotide polymorphisms.

But many of the companies that are working with law enforcement to create these snip profiles are using sequencing, whole genome sequencing.

And right now there’s really no good techniques to deconvolute on those.

And so we run all of our mixtures through microarray and they do very well there.

But if you are exclusively using that whole genome sequencing, you’re going to really really struggle with mixtures.

And so I know there’s been a lot of work to try to deconvolute using that platform versus microarray.

So I suspect there are a number of people that are working as fast as they can trying to figure out a way to work with these more complex mixtures.

NY’s case is certainly the one that is making this a top priority, but it’s something that we really need in the field anyway.

So, do you think I know there’s so more and more of these companies out there now as this technology emerges, would they be sort of fighting to get involved with this case because it’s so high-profile because they could be the ones that end up in the headlines if they are able to and and you said is it deconvolute? Is that the word you use? Right.

So when you’re is that essentially is that breaking it apart since we know it’s mixed.

The sheriff has said the DNA was mixed.

Yeah.

The term for extracting out one person’s DNA from that is deconvolution.

So if you’re trying to deconvolute that mixture and find that unknown perpetrator’s DNA, that is the term that is used and that’s the technique that’s used as well.

And so yes, I think there’s a good chance that uh people would like to make their name on, you know, being a deconvolution expert on this case because it is so high-profile and it does pro uh provide a platform for somebody to help solve it and again make a name for themselves or their company.

So, I think that’s possible, but there’s also companies behind the scenes that really aren’t looking for that type of recognition that could be working with DNA Labs International and trying to help them push that forward.

So, it’s not necessarily a competing company.

It could be a company like Estraa that partners with a lot of the labs that do this work.

I heard you say somewhere that you think there needs to be a second crime scene.

What did you What did you mean by that? Well, I it’s not that I think there needs to be, but I think that if they have collected all of the potential DNA at the residence and all they’ve ended up with is this complex DNA mixture, then my hope is that they will discover a second crime scene somewhere where Nancy was held or perhaps the car that she was transported in because that gives a whole another opportunity for finding the DNA of the perpetrator.

And so if there has if they’ve not been successful in finding a good source of his DNA at NY’s home, my hope is they’ll get another chance.

Now, the really sad part of that is, you know, if they find her body, if she’s deceased, that gives them another opportunity.

And so I don’t think it’s the end.

You know, I’m hoping really hoping that this, you know, just doesn’t go quiet and we never hear anything again.

And so that there was a grandfather kidnapped in Australia and it was apparently mistaken identity.

It happened right around the same time as NY’s case, and I was surprised more people didn’t talk about it, but they found a second crime scene.

They found a location where he had been held, and that gave them a lot of additional evidence.

And so that’s what really kind of got me thinking in that that way.

That makes sense.

If they don’t though and all they have is this DNA sample from the house which which we know is mixed.

Mhm.

Um and they’re having maybe trouble with it eventually.

And you mentioned, you know, the emerging technology and these different companies eventually will they definitely be able to crack it or is there a chance that they couldn’t? You know, I don’t know the proportions in that mixture.

It depends how many people are in it and how what the percentages of those profiles are and which one is the perpetrator or which ones, right? There could be five people in that and the person they’re trying to identify, if they’re even in that mixture, might only be 10%.

And the chances of identifying somebody with, you know, that small of a contribution, I think, is unlikely, even with advancements.

I’m not saying it would never happen, but I think it is extremely challenging.

But without knowing specifically what this mixture is that they’re working with, it’s hard for me to predict.

I still believe that there has to be the perpetrator or perpetrators DNA at that crime scene.

And I’ve done some interviews and talked about this and I see headlines say that I’m giving the FBI advice.

I’m not giving the FBI advice.

I’ve been asked, “What would I do if it was my case? I would have crime scene investigators return to that home and continue trying to find sources of the DNA because DNA is quite hardy.

It lasts.

I’ve worked cases where they’ve detected DNA decades later.

And some of my cases where we think we’re dealing with the perpetrator’s DNA, it’s actually DNA from someone who lived in that home many, many years earlier.

So, I believe that it’s possible that that person that needs to be identified or persons uh do have DNA at that crime scene, even if it hasn’t been collected yet.

The other possibility is a hair, a rootless hair.

You know, that’s where Estraa comes in.

Again, Estraa Forensics is they are that groundbreaking company out there in UC Santa Cruz that is helping us solve cases with rootless hair, which scientists said would never be possible, but Dr.

Ed Green there has made it possible and I personally have helped solve a handful of cases that only had rootless hair and no other evidence, no other physical evidence.

And so it’s really hard to go somewhere and not leave something behind, some kind of DNA or even just a hair.

Even with how that person was dressed, it’s still very very possible and I think probable that something was left behind.

Yeah.

Two follow-up questions on that.

Rootless hair.

So is typically the DNA found in the root part of the hair that’s like sticking out of your that’s in the in your head.

Is that right? Yes.

So traditionally that’s when hair has been useful is when it has a root.

A root is a great source of DNA.

But there are thousands of cases that have rootless hair, just the hair shaft, broken off hair.

And they’ve always been told that that’s not helpful.

You’re not going to be able to get useful DNA or a profile from that.

But thanks to the brilliant Dr.

Dr.

Ed Green, we are able to use that to identify someone through investigative genetic genealogy.

So he found a way to extract a snip profile from that rootless hair which allows us to make that preliminary identification and then of course law enforcement has to follow that lead look for other evidence etc.

But it has been very very successful and I it will continue to be so.

It’s it’s really the most recent advancement.

You know, there was investigative genetic genealogy which was a huge jump forward, but then there was the rootless hair technique that was another big jump forward.

It’s so interesting that it’s people in private industry and at different universities that are making these advancements because I think like outsiders like me just assume like, oh, the FBI, they would be the ones to have the best of the best and everything would just go to Quantico.

But it sounds like there’s different companies and different um professors at different places throughout the country that specialize in different things that could be helpful.

Yeah, I think there are people who won’t take no for an answer.

whether they’re in government or private industry.

And those are the people that are really pushing this forward.

You know, we were told we would never be able to use autoomal snip DNA for genealological purposes.

And we proved that wrong.

And then we were told you’d never be able to get usable DNA from a hair shaft.

And now, you know, they’ve proven that wrong.

Dr.

Ed Green and his team has proven that wrong.

And so, I don’t think it’s necessarily government versus uh private.

It’s just that type of person who doesn’t take no for an answer, doesn’t believe that, and even takes it as a challenge.

Oh, you say I can’t do this.

I’m going to find a way to do it.

Right.

And you mentioned going back to the scene.

Do you think that they should do that even now? I mean, because we know that, you know, I’ve been out there when family members have gone in and people have gone in and out.

You know, the prosecutors were there one day, there was moving people there.

Would it still be beneficial despite all these people going in and out since they cleared the scene? Well, it I wish that hadn’t happened, but yes, because they know who’s been in and out, so their DNA can still be eliminated.

It’s still been a relatively small number of people inside the house.

Now, outside the house might be a different story.

And so, I don’t know what they’re working with.

I mean, it’s possible they do have a viable DNA profile right now, and we just don’t know it.

and they’re working behind the scenes, but if they don’t, I don’t want, you know, this to be the end of it.

And so to me, if if a second crime scene isn’t found soon or Nancy is not found soon, then the next best thing would to be to return to that known crime scene and see if they can find DNA because if he was there for 40 minutes or 42 minutes, uh, which I have heard is a theory, then it’s almost impossible not to leave your DNA behind.

And I’ve talked about this a lot about that bite flashlight that he appears to have in his mouth.

You know, you would be leaving saliva.

I just don’t see how you wouldn’t.

When he leaned over to try to disable the camera, I think it would have been very hard not to slobber onto the ground below that.

but also in the home if he was giving any sort of oral commands, he would have had to take that out of his mouth and he would have immediately had plentiful DNA on the outside of those gloves.

And so unless he changed his gloves, he very well would have left something.

But somebody wrote to me yesterday talking about this because I’ve been talking about it a lot and they said they have used those bite lights and that a lot of saliva is produced and a lot of slobber ends up happening.

And that was exactly my theory.

I’ve never used one, but it only makes sense.

And so I think uh that there is likely saliva at that scene, but it’s really hard to know where, right? and to collect that.

Even if you’re a very expert crime scene investigator, it’s a hard thing to predict.

But, you know, there’s that whole house there.

If the person was in the bedroom, they were clearly in the living room, the back door, uh, in front.

I still think it’s worth trying if they don’t have a viable DNA sample.

I just don’t want, you know, them to give up.

I don’t want any of us to have to give up.

And so, no, it’s not the best option, but I think it’s still a possibility.

If they do have a viable DNA sample by now, um, do you think that there would have already been more progress? Do you think that the fact that there hasn’t been progress is a sign that they don’t? I do, cuz we can look at the glove that was found about 2 miles away.

They pretty quickly identified that person and ruled them out.

And I think that was through genetic, sorry to interrupt you, but I think that was through genetic genealogy on process of elimination of how they must have done that.

Yeah, I haven’t heard it confirmed, but I have a very strong belief that that they did use genetic genealogy to identify that person.

It just it makes sense.

So, you can see how quickly that happened.

So, I think if they had a viable profile and a a snip profile is what it’s called when they create that uh file that they can upload to the genetic genealogy databases.

I think they would have put a lot of resources on it and that person would have been identified by now.

Unless they just found that DNA, you know, very very recently, but if it was among the first things tested, I believe this case would already be solved.

So, you’re you suspect they don’t have a viable sample at this point? I I suspect that, but I don’t know because they may be continuing to test swabs and items from the home that may turn up something.

You know, it’s like I said, it’s really hard to predict where you’re going to find that DNA.

And so, if they collected a lot of swabs and physical evidence, it’s certainly possible they might come across that one DNA profile that is needed to break this case wide open.

You said something else that really interested me.

Something else I read that Savannah should be begging um some of these these databases like Ancestry to to open up.

Well, that’s only if they have that snip profile though, right? It’s not there’s no point, right? If they don’t have anything to put to enter into the database.

Yeah.

And when I said that is when we didn’t really know what they had.

Yeah.

But I think with the glove they were able to just use Jed match andor family tree DNA.

the two that we always use to identify that person.

And I think that kept the commercial companies from getting that subpoena or warrant to open up their databases.

I think it would have happened if they had not been able to quickly make that identification.

And so if they are able to create that snip profile of the presumed perpetrator, I do believe that the big commercial companies that have barred law enforcement will be served with a warrant to make those those comparisons.

Yeah.

And I never really understood that, Cece, until you explained it to me.

And I think people just gloss this over when they’re doing the stories about these cases is that the big databases like ancestry.

com do not share their information with law enforcement.

Right? So it’s it’s just these smaller specialized ones.

So when they try to do the genetic genealogy, they don’t have access to everything, right? So there are over 54 million people who have taken direct consumer DNA tests.

Now, if we could compare against those large databases, then we would be solving cases every few hours, multiple a day.

Instead, we’re using less than 2 million profiles to compare against because of the restrictions that have been placed on those databases.

And so, it really is a question of genetic privacy versus public safety, right? because we could be getting violent criminals off the streets, you know, very, very quickly if we could compare against even a fraction of that 50 million people.

But instead, we’re limited to the three smallest databases, Jed Match, Family TreeDNA, and the new uh DNA justice database that I helped create.

Have they ever made an exception? Have any of those bigger databases ever let law enforcement work with them? No, they haven’t.

because they release transparency reports, I think annually, maybe more often, and they uh let their customers know what they have had to provide to law enforcement.

And so far, it’s just been like credit card information, that type of thing.

Nothing as far as their genetic databases, but I think that’s coming.

I think it’ll be a knockdown dragout fight.

Uh this would have been an interesting case if it had come up because the public is so behind the Guthri and wants Nancy found so much that I think it would have been a really bad PR move for those companies to fight against the use of their databases but they would because they feel they need to protect their customers from you know law enforcement’s prying eyes right and so what people need to understand though is even if they did have serve a successful warrant.

They’re not getting your DNA or your DNA profile.

They’re just forcing that company to compare that unknown perpetrator’s DNA against the database to see who they’re relatives with.

So, they’re not seeing anybody’s actual DNA profile.

They’re just getting a list back that would say this person shares 1% of their DNA or this person shares 3%.

This is most likely a second cousin, for instance.

And so most of the time it’s going to be people who share very very small amounts of their DNA.

But there are exceptions where we get a very close relative even in the small databases.

I’ve had parent child matches and full siblings.

So you would see that some so it would impact some people much more significantly.

But for the vast majority of people, yeah, it might turn out their third cousin is a serial killer.

Do you and I remember with Brian Coberger they were really careful to keep the names confidential like we never saw the names of who the distant relatives were you know that was all redacted yeah that’s been best practices we’ve tried to do that from the very beginning because I came from the uh adoption search world and most of my colleagues that do this work did as well we were already very well educated on the concerns of you know matches and people in those databases So, we’ve bent over backwards to fight for those names to be privatized.

Now, some people have come forward and outed themselves and said, you know, they were the closest match on a case.

But as far as the reports that we’re providing that then go to the courts, we leave out the names because that’s not what’s important.

What’s important is the common ancestors, right? So, if you’ve got five matches who all share their great great-grandparents, that’s really all that matters.

We don’t need to know anything more about those people.

Do you think the Nancy Guthrie case, if they end up getting a good profile, could be the case where for the first time, these companies are forced to let law enforcement in.

I do.

And if it’s not this case, it’ll be another one.

It’ll be the next big case where they’ve got a profile, they’ve got a DNA sample, it’s not hitting encodus and they need to stop that person, you know, before they hurt anyone else like in Brian Coberger’s case.

I mean, I believe he would have hurt more people had he not been identified through investigative genetic genealogy very quickly.

So, I think it’s going to happen.

It’s really just a matter of time and what cases happen.

You know, I think it would have happened on um the Charlie Kirk assassination, for instance, if they hadn’t identified him quickly or the attempted assassination of Trump.

those types of cases.

They’re not going to hesitate to try to get into those databases if they are stuck because they’re, you know, really important cases, really high-profile cases where they feel that they can make an exception in those cases because law enforcement is trying to follow the rules.

They are trying to use genetic genealogy in a responsible way.

They don’t want to turn the public against this tool.

And that was what I really fought for for the first several years I was doing this work was we’ve got to stick to the rules.

We’ve got to follow these because we don’t want to turn the public against the use of genetic genealogy for law enforcement.

But I’ve realized over the years that most of the public thinks we are using those big databases.

They don’t even know that there are I did.

I honestly did and I even covered Coberger and everything until you explained it to me.

I didn’t fully understand it.

Yeah.

So, I’ve, you know, I’ve softened a little bit on it, especially after working so many cases of these terrible violent criminals where you see real harm done to people and to families and to society.

I’m a little bit more in the gray area now where I think that in some cases, uh, an exception may be, uh, you know, arguable, right? And especially because people think we’re doing it already.

And also I was involved in a long-term study with Baylor University and we found across the board that 91% of people were supportive of the idea of using investigative genetic genealogy to stop violent criminals.

That was eye openening to me because I I’m kind of a target.

I get a lot of the negativity.

There’s a lot of very loud minority voices.

And so to see that we have such broad support and then on the other hand that so many people think we’re already using ancestry 23 and me that um you know I and then also what I said as far as seeing how much damage is done on the other side of things.

I’ve definitely changed my viewpoint a little bit because what’s the worst thing that can happen if they compare against your DNA? you know, a close family member of yours is outed as a violent criminal, but do we really want those people having access to our loved ones, our children, our grandma? Do we want them sitting around our Thanksgiving table? You know, as difficult as it would be to make that sort of discovery, I think it’s important to weed those people out, not just from society, but from among our own families.

Well, and if you’re also that creeped out by being in a database, you could just still you could just not do the DNA testing to find out your you could say, “I’m not doing the ancestry testing.

” Right? It’s not like and many people have made that decision, but the problem is their relatives have decided for them because if your second cousin has tested, we can find you, right? And so, a lot of people have decided, I’m not going to do it.

But especially if a close family member makes a different decision, then your DNA or part of your DNA is already exposed.

Interesting.

Your second cousin, it’s only 3%, right? But if multiple second cousins from different branches have tested or your first cousin, you know, there is a lot of uh overlap that you’re seeing.

And so if one sibling, for instance, says, “I’m not going to test.

” And the other full sibling tests, well, it’s exactly the same family tree.

Yeah.

I hadn’t thought about that.

Interesting.

Yeah.

See, something basic to you.

To me is like that’s I hadn’t thought about it that way.

Even if you chose not to do the test, family members did.

It’s kind of like the same as you doing it.

Yeah.

I mean, Pandora is really out of the box as far as those big databases.

We built this incredibly powerful tool for human identification.

When people were laughing at us and rolling their eyes at us in the early days, you know, they thought, “Oh, these genealogologists, right? Nobody took us seriously.

” But by the time people realized what we had built, it was already too late because there were tens of millions of people who had made the choice to put their DNA in these databases.

So I don’t think there’s any putting it back in the box.

It’s done and the vast majority of people in the United States are identifiable as a result.

It’s a different uh subject, but it’s interesting with with the Guthrie case, you know, them being able to pull the video off of the Google camera on the front of the house, even though Nancy didn’t have a subscription.

It was just an inactive, no subscription camera.

She wasn’t paying for the subscription.

Google still had those images somewhere on a cloud, which got a lot of people kind of a little bit creeped out, like, I guess they have your images even if you’re not paying them to store them.

And you also think about like Alexa.

Is Alexa always listening? You’re Alexa.

I mean, I I think people are just kind of creeped out by by this, you know, big brother, big government.

I mean, do you think it do you sort of understand that with the with with the genealogy, too? I mean, it’s kind of like you feel like they know everything about you.

Oh, I totally get it.

But I think that people need to worry about a lot of other things like you point out.

Also, you know, your DNA means nothing to me if I can’t build your biological family tree.

And to do that, I’m using public records.

So in this country, we’ve made certain choices that make us really vulnerable to identification.

And that includes allowing companies to compile all this information about us and our families and sell it.

These uh people search type databases.

That’s how I will identify who someone’s parents are most of the time and sometimes grandparents.

Because with living people, it’s much harder to identify who their families are.

If if it weren’t for what people put out there about themselves on social media, which we use a lot to build these trees, and then those people search type databases, we don’t have access to credit bureaus, but it’s a similar idea.

We’ve allowed that.

Whereas a country like Canada protects their residents, citizens privacy much, much more strictly.

And so it’s very difficult to identify living people there.

So when we’re working on cases up in Canada, we can often get it to grandparents and we say, you know, to law enforcement, you got to identify who the grandkids are because we can’t do it because Canada is so strict about their privacy laws.

So you can really see the difference when you’re working a case in the US versus somewhere like Canada.

I mean, we just have as a society chosen to put a lot of information out there about ourselves and even more so now with social media.

And so, people, I think, should think more about those types of things.

There’s a lot of emphasis put on genetic privacy, but it’s not nearly as big of a threat as some of these other things in my opinion.

Yeah.

Really interesting to think about.

Is there anything else with Nancy Guthri’s case when it comes to the DNA that we should be considering and thinking about right now? Because it just feel I mean it’s now been more than two months.

Things sort of feel like they’re at a little bit of a standill.

I don’t think there’s a lot more to say except that there’s undoubtedly a lot of work going on behind the scenes.

There’s no doubt in my mind they are continuing to work with whatever evidence or potential evidence they have, including that complex mixture to try to help find Nancy and who’s responsible for this.

And so we might not hear about it because sometimes things move really slowly.

You know, science can move slowly and genetic genealogy can move slowly depending on certain factors.

But I don’t think people should doubt that there is still concerted efforts behind the scenes.

And just one last thing, I’m kind of fascinated by that there’s all these different private companies, you know, with new emerging technologies.

Is this big business, like if one of them was to be able to crack the case and figure out how to split the DNA and get a good profile? Like, is there a lot of money in that? Is that an incentive for for some of these companies? It’s a really great question.

As I said, no one was that interested in what we were doing when it was just for genealogy and even adopes.

But as soon as we started helping law enforcement solve crimes, it became big business and there’s a lot of competition.

There’s been venture capital money invested.

And so I find it hard to see a huge financial gain because law enforcement is always short of funds.

It’s so hard to make any money doing genetic genealogy.

But I think on the lab side, because none of the crime labs have the capability to create these snip profiles, there’s still a lot of potential for a third-party lab to do a lot of work.

There are, you know, so many unsolved cases out there that have DNA available or have rootless hair, for instance, available.

It’s just a matter of getting funding.

And because this is still relatively new, it’s not written into the budgets typically.

And so, yes, if the federal government decided, hey, we want to really heavily invest in this field, then there could be some real big winners from that, right? Commercial companies.

Um, but at the moment, I don’t see a lot of potential for that, but it could change.

And there are certainly companies that are putting their eggs in that basket, right? hoping right every crime lab in the country is going to uh adopt this type of technology but that may end up benefiting the equipment companies the most.

So, I heard that there is some new equipment that’s going to be coming out, a new machine that will help with these deconvolution mixture issues, which is really something because what’s been happening now is the DNA comes out of the lab and then biioinformatic scientists work with that data to try to extract out those profiles.

But apparently there’s some equipment coming that is going to help from the beginning to separate things out.

That’s a there’s a lot of, you know, potential gain there.

And so if every crime lab got funding to buy a sequencer and create snip profiles and a deconvolution type of machine, then I think there’s a lot of money potentially out there.

Yeah.

I’m just thinking if I’m Savannah Guthrie with the resources she has and the platform and you know President Trump was calling her to talk about the you know I mean she’s she has that kind of influence you know I wonder if there’s something she can do or someone she knows to push this along if you’re saying you know there’s these new technologies there’s new equipment like maybe there’s something out there that could really make a difference that just hasn’t been used yet.

Yeah.

I don’t that equipment I am told is not ready yet.

Okay.

Probably won’t be ready until next year.

Now, they may be trying to rush it out because this is a great platform, right, to become known and they may also legitimately legitimately really want to help the Guthri.

And so, you know, it’s hard to predict, but it was interesting to me to hear that that was in the offing that that was even being created.

And that’s why it’s so difficult to predict because we couldn’t possibly have predicted where we would be today with genetic genealogy.

And so it’s hard to predict a couple of years, even a year into the future of how things might change and what new capabilities we might have.

Yeah.

Because like the rules are changing, right? Like you said, at one point were they saying rootless hair was just nothing? Yeah.

They said you could only get mitochondrial DNA.

Mitochondrial DNA is the least useful for identification.

And they just didn’t believe you could get autotosomal DNA, which is the type of DNA that we use to make these identifications.

and it was hidden in there, you know, and we’ve heard about junk DNA, right, for decades.

And now they’re learning that a lot of that what was thought to be junk is not junk at all.

And we were told we couldn’t use autotosomal snip DNA for genealogy because the recombination rate is so fast, right? You lose 50% every generation.

You get 50% from mom, 50% from dad.

So the other 50% is lost.

And because of that quick recombination, it was believed we wouldn’t be able to harness that for genealogy.

And here we are.

Look, you know, it’s that was really made me jump in with both feet very early on because I saw the potential for that.

And that is what has, you know, made what we do so powerful.

We used to use just mitochondrial DNA and Y chromosome DNA and it just didn’t have the type of power that we see with this type of DNA.

Interesting.

Well, I appreciate your time, CeCe.

You always help us understand it uh in a better way and sort of the bigger picture because it’s it’s complicated.

So, thank you very much.

You do an amazing job.

I’ve been watching your interviews and you’re really you have some great people on and great information.

You keep all of us up to date.

Thank you, Cece.

As always, I really appreciate Cece Moore for taking the time to talk with me.

Um especially with something as complicated as DNA and the way that they test it.

Uh, it’s just nice and and helpful to have someone be able to explain it to people like you and me who are not scientists obviously.

And we’ve we’ve done the stories.

I mean, there are cases that are 30 years old and there’s some new DNA technology that solves an old case.

Hopefully, this isn’t going to go on for decades with the Nancy Guthrie case.

Um, but as you heard Cece explain, there are emerging technologies right now that could help move this case forward.

So, again, appreciate her time.

Appreciate you guys for following along.

Appreciate you for subscribing and supporting my channel.

Um, I’ve got a couple of other things I’m working on, so I’ll keep you guys posted.

Uh, and I hope everybody has a good day, and I’ll talk to you guys later.