Forensic Science International: Genetics 8 (2014) 244–245
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Forensic Science International: Genetics journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/fsig
Editorial
Highlights of the 25th Congress of the International Society for Forensic Genetics (ISFG)
The city of Melbourne welcomed the participants of the 25th international ISFG with crisp, sunny spring weather, friendly people and a spectacular meeting venue. The Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre was a very modern and generous space, which easily accommodated the large poster and vendor exhibition and provided many opportunities to meet and talk to colleagues. The congress as always was carried by the active forensic genetics research community that had submitted over 400 abstracts; consequently there were 58 oral presentations and 312 posters. Based on the overall abstracts, the two most prominent topics of this meeting were the currently available new sequencing methods and body fluid identification. As Bruce Budowle pointed out in his presentation, the new sequencing technology has arrived and should probably not be called next generation sequencing (NGS) anymore; another term for these high-through-put sequencing approaches that can provide 1000s of sequences at a time is massive parallel sequencing or MPS. The contributions about body fluid identification ranged from still exploratory assay development to casework experience. Over 550 scientists and criminal justice professionals attended the conference; 197 attendants were from Australia, which constituted the largest contingent of participants from a single country with United States of America being a distant second with 46 attendees. Australia and the different Australian states have made a large commitment to the quality and progress of forensic genetics in Australia and it was gratifying to see the large interest generated by the first ISFG meeting on 5th continent. Overall attendees were from 50 different countries and many different types of institutions, such as academic, public or private laboratories. Students are the new generation of forensic scientists and it was excellent that there were 67 student attendees. The program was anchored by seven keynote speakers and the congress presidents and the ISFG board were honored to have Sir Alec Jeffreys deliver the opening address. A look back to the beginning of DNA based forensic genetics provides perspective on how technology has evolved since 1985, and how at the same time, quality and interpretation issues still remain a main focus. Sir Alec Jeffreys specifically talked about ethical issues surrounding the generation of large DNA databases, where each country has to weigh the privacy rights of its citizens against the public interest in crime fighting. Eske Willerslev from the University of Copenhagen was the keynote speaker for the first scientific session. Professor Willerslev is an expert on ancient DNA, evolutionary biology and molecular 1872-4973/$ – see front matter ß 2013 Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.fsigen.2013.10.013
ice core analysis. He is one of the corresponding authors of the groundbreaking paper on the first complete ancient human (extinct palaeo Eskimo) genome sequence published in Nature in 2010. His talk addressed massive parallel sequencing issues and presented the progress and recent findings on ancient human settlements mostly in Greenland and North America. The afternoon key note speaker, SallyAnn Harbison, who is the technical leader of the Forensic Biology group at the Environmental Science and Research (ESR) Institute in Auckland New Zealand, presented on the ‘‘changing face of body fluid identification’’. This talk and the subsequent oral presentations focused on RNA, miRNA or methylation assays. Several laboratories including the ESR have made good progress in establishing and testing different assay types. As always in forensic science, the robustness of the test and the interpretation scheme are critical for a smooth casework implementation. The second day of the congress started with a session on lineage markers and a keynote talk by Chris Tyler-Smith from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridgeshire, UK. His group participates in the 1000 genome project and the work he presented used massive parallel sequencing to refine the phylogeny of the human Y-chromosome. The new tree confirmed previous data on timing of lineage expansions and offers more information on the origin of the modern Y lineages. One challenge discussed was the need for an updated nomenclature for haplogroup defining SNPs that can accommodate the vast amount of new sequence information now available. The next invited speaker was Rebecca Johnson from the Australian Museum in Sydney, where she is the head of the Australian Centre for Wildlife Genomics. She reminded the audience how much money is involved in illegal trafficking of endangered species such as parrots, or tissue from endangered species, especially ivory. The criminal networks going after these illegal gains are operating on a global scale and affecting not only the wildlife but also the social stability in many countries. In order to promote excellence in non-human forensic casework, the Society for Wildlife Forensic Sciences (SWFS), which was founded in 2011, is adopting professional certification and laboratory accreditation standards and offering proficiency tests. Friday September 6th was the last day of the official conference, but many attendees stayed on to participate in the lineage marker interpretation workshop on Saturday. Friday morning was dedicated to DNA interpretation issues and statistical approaches. John Buckleton from the Environmental Science and Research (ESR) Institute in Auckland New Zealand gave the keynote speech on ‘‘how to interpret DNA evidence properly’’. With 22 years of
Editorial / Forensic Science International: Genetics 8 (2014) 244–245
experience in forensic casework and statistics, Dr. Buckleton gave some background on previous approaches and then focused in on the issue of getting the ‘‘right’’ answer and how that differs from getting the same answer across different laboratories. Likelihood ratios make the best use of all available information and that furthers the quest for getting a ‘‘right’’ answer. There then followed a lively set of presentations on the nuances of interpretation of complex profiles. The last keynote talk was presented by Jeremy Austin, who is the deputy director of the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA and the director of the newly established Advanced DNA Forensic Facility at the University of Adelaide in Australia. He has been applying his ancient DNA expertise to forensic matters, in particular the successful testing of highly compromised human remains in missing person cases. The remainder of the last session was mostly dedicated to new marker types testing for ancestry or phenotypic information that can also support missing person investigations. DNA interpretation was also the topic of several of this year’s educational workshops. Promoting training and education in forensic genetics is a big part of the mission of the ISFG and, aside from the basic and advanced DNA evidence interpretation workshops, the 25th meeting also offered the opportunity to learn about genomic technologies, forensic DNA phenotyping, disaster victim identification, wildlife forensic science, messenger RNA body fluid testing, autosomal binary markers for ancestry and DNA lineage marker interpretation. A total of 630 registrations were received for the 9 workshops with approximately 30 to over 100 participants attending each workshop; the forensic DNA phenotyping workshop being the most popular with 111 registrations. There was also a free 1 h workshop on writing and reviewing scientific papers, where forensic scientist and textbook author John Butler shared his approach to handling scientific manuscripts. This was being offered for the first time and created a lot of interest with much positive feedback. The 2013 scientific prize of the ISFG was awarded to Peter Gill from the University of Oslo for his many contributions to the field of forensic genetics. Professor Gill co-authored the original forensic application of DNA fingerprinting to semen stains with Sir Alec Jeffreys in 1985 and has continued to further the field via numerous innovations during his time with UK Forensic Science Service and his ongoing research on approaches to dealing with DNA data uncertainty. At the member assembly ISFG members voted in favor of second terms for society president Mechthild Prinz, New York, USA and the representative for all working arties Walther Parson, Innsbruck, Austria. Former ISFG president Peter
245
Schneider, Cologne, Germany is going to rejoin the board on January 1st, 2014 as the new secretary. He was voted to take over from Wolfgang Mayr, Vienna, Austria who has served as the ISFG secretary since longer than anyone can remember! He is now going to be a still active but very relaxed retiree. The new ISFG board expressed their gratitude to Professor Mayr for his many years of service. The member assembly also voted on the location of the 2017 congress of the ISFG and chose Seoul in Korea. This is a very exciting venture and now the 27th congress in 2017 will be the first ISFG meeting in an Asian country. There were four additional prize recipients at the 2013 ISFG meeting. The Australian organizing committee had donated prizes for best oral and best poster presentation by a student. The prizes were awarded to Electra Williams (ESR, New Zealand) for her oral presentation on ‘‘The development of a method or FISH identification of forensically relevant body fluids’’ and Nano Nagle (La Trobe University, Australia) for the best poster by a student (Origins and affinities of Australian Aboriginal peoples’–evidence from mitochondrial haplogroup P). Susan Walsh from the Erasmus University (Rotterdam, the Netherlands) group won the ISFG price for best oral for her presentation on ‘‘Predicting skin color from DNA using a model based approach’’ and Sarah Leake from the University of Lausanne won best poster for ‘‘Human identification through analysis of the salivary microbiome’’. The last task for this editorial is to thank all the colleagues who sacrificed their time to help organize the meeting or teach a workshop. Some very active people actually did both. We would like to acknowledge all of you, especially Linzi Wilson-Wilde from the National Institute on Forensic Science of the Australian New Zealand Policing Advisory Agency, and are also thanking our government and industry sponsors, and the hospitable people of Melbourne.
Mechthild Prinz* John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York, USA Adrian Linacre Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia *Corresponding author E-mail address: [email protected] (M. Prinz)
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Forensic Science International: Genetics journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/fsig
Editorial
Highlights of the 25th Congress of the International Society for Forensic Genetics (ISFG)
The city of Melbourne welcomed the participants of the 25th international ISFG with crisp, sunny spring weather, friendly people and a spectacular meeting venue. The Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre was a very modern and generous space, which easily accommodated the large poster and vendor exhibition and provided many opportunities to meet and talk to colleagues. The congress as always was carried by the active forensic genetics research community that had submitted over 400 abstracts; consequently there were 58 oral presentations and 312 posters. Based on the overall abstracts, the two most prominent topics of this meeting were the currently available new sequencing methods and body fluid identification. As Bruce Budowle pointed out in his presentation, the new sequencing technology has arrived and should probably not be called next generation sequencing (NGS) anymore; another term for these high-through-put sequencing approaches that can provide 1000s of sequences at a time is massive parallel sequencing or MPS. The contributions about body fluid identification ranged from still exploratory assay development to casework experience. Over 550 scientists and criminal justice professionals attended the conference; 197 attendants were from Australia, which constituted the largest contingent of participants from a single country with United States of America being a distant second with 46 attendees. Australia and the different Australian states have made a large commitment to the quality and progress of forensic genetics in Australia and it was gratifying to see the large interest generated by the first ISFG meeting on 5th continent. Overall attendees were from 50 different countries and many different types of institutions, such as academic, public or private laboratories. Students are the new generation of forensic scientists and it was excellent that there were 67 student attendees. The program was anchored by seven keynote speakers and the congress presidents and the ISFG board were honored to have Sir Alec Jeffreys deliver the opening address. A look back to the beginning of DNA based forensic genetics provides perspective on how technology has evolved since 1985, and how at the same time, quality and interpretation issues still remain a main focus. Sir Alec Jeffreys specifically talked about ethical issues surrounding the generation of large DNA databases, where each country has to weigh the privacy rights of its citizens against the public interest in crime fighting. Eske Willerslev from the University of Copenhagen was the keynote speaker for the first scientific session. Professor Willerslev is an expert on ancient DNA, evolutionary biology and molecular 1872-4973/$ – see front matter ß 2013 Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.fsigen.2013.10.013
ice core analysis. He is one of the corresponding authors of the groundbreaking paper on the first complete ancient human (extinct palaeo Eskimo) genome sequence published in Nature in 2010. His talk addressed massive parallel sequencing issues and presented the progress and recent findings on ancient human settlements mostly in Greenland and North America. The afternoon key note speaker, SallyAnn Harbison, who is the technical leader of the Forensic Biology group at the Environmental Science and Research (ESR) Institute in Auckland New Zealand, presented on the ‘‘changing face of body fluid identification’’. This talk and the subsequent oral presentations focused on RNA, miRNA or methylation assays. Several laboratories including the ESR have made good progress in establishing and testing different assay types. As always in forensic science, the robustness of the test and the interpretation scheme are critical for a smooth casework implementation. The second day of the congress started with a session on lineage markers and a keynote talk by Chris Tyler-Smith from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridgeshire, UK. His group participates in the 1000 genome project and the work he presented used massive parallel sequencing to refine the phylogeny of the human Y-chromosome. The new tree confirmed previous data on timing of lineage expansions and offers more information on the origin of the modern Y lineages. One challenge discussed was the need for an updated nomenclature for haplogroup defining SNPs that can accommodate the vast amount of new sequence information now available. The next invited speaker was Rebecca Johnson from the Australian Museum in Sydney, where she is the head of the Australian Centre for Wildlife Genomics. She reminded the audience how much money is involved in illegal trafficking of endangered species such as parrots, or tissue from endangered species, especially ivory. The criminal networks going after these illegal gains are operating on a global scale and affecting not only the wildlife but also the social stability in many countries. In order to promote excellence in non-human forensic casework, the Society for Wildlife Forensic Sciences (SWFS), which was founded in 2011, is adopting professional certification and laboratory accreditation standards and offering proficiency tests. Friday September 6th was the last day of the official conference, but many attendees stayed on to participate in the lineage marker interpretation workshop on Saturday. Friday morning was dedicated to DNA interpretation issues and statistical approaches. John Buckleton from the Environmental Science and Research (ESR) Institute in Auckland New Zealand gave the keynote speech on ‘‘how to interpret DNA evidence properly’’. With 22 years of
Editorial / Forensic Science International: Genetics 8 (2014) 244–245
experience in forensic casework and statistics, Dr. Buckleton gave some background on previous approaches and then focused in on the issue of getting the ‘‘right’’ answer and how that differs from getting the same answer across different laboratories. Likelihood ratios make the best use of all available information and that furthers the quest for getting a ‘‘right’’ answer. There then followed a lively set of presentations on the nuances of interpretation of complex profiles. The last keynote talk was presented by Jeremy Austin, who is the deputy director of the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA and the director of the newly established Advanced DNA Forensic Facility at the University of Adelaide in Australia. He has been applying his ancient DNA expertise to forensic matters, in particular the successful testing of highly compromised human remains in missing person cases. The remainder of the last session was mostly dedicated to new marker types testing for ancestry or phenotypic information that can also support missing person investigations. DNA interpretation was also the topic of several of this year’s educational workshops. Promoting training and education in forensic genetics is a big part of the mission of the ISFG and, aside from the basic and advanced DNA evidence interpretation workshops, the 25th meeting also offered the opportunity to learn about genomic technologies, forensic DNA phenotyping, disaster victim identification, wildlife forensic science, messenger RNA body fluid testing, autosomal binary markers for ancestry and DNA lineage marker interpretation. A total of 630 registrations were received for the 9 workshops with approximately 30 to over 100 participants attending each workshop; the forensic DNA phenotyping workshop being the most popular with 111 registrations. There was also a free 1 h workshop on writing and reviewing scientific papers, where forensic scientist and textbook author John Butler shared his approach to handling scientific manuscripts. This was being offered for the first time and created a lot of interest with much positive feedback. The 2013 scientific prize of the ISFG was awarded to Peter Gill from the University of Oslo for his many contributions to the field of forensic genetics. Professor Gill co-authored the original forensic application of DNA fingerprinting to semen stains with Sir Alec Jeffreys in 1985 and has continued to further the field via numerous innovations during his time with UK Forensic Science Service and his ongoing research on approaches to dealing with DNA data uncertainty. At the member assembly ISFG members voted in favor of second terms for society president Mechthild Prinz, New York, USA and the representative for all working arties Walther Parson, Innsbruck, Austria. Former ISFG president Peter
245
Schneider, Cologne, Germany is going to rejoin the board on January 1st, 2014 as the new secretary. He was voted to take over from Wolfgang Mayr, Vienna, Austria who has served as the ISFG secretary since longer than anyone can remember! He is now going to be a still active but very relaxed retiree. The new ISFG board expressed their gratitude to Professor Mayr for his many years of service. The member assembly also voted on the location of the 2017 congress of the ISFG and chose Seoul in Korea. This is a very exciting venture and now the 27th congress in 2017 will be the first ISFG meeting in an Asian country. There were four additional prize recipients at the 2013 ISFG meeting. The Australian organizing committee had donated prizes for best oral and best poster presentation by a student. The prizes were awarded to Electra Williams (ESR, New Zealand) for her oral presentation on ‘‘The development of a method or FISH identification of forensically relevant body fluids’’ and Nano Nagle (La Trobe University, Australia) for the best poster by a student (Origins and affinities of Australian Aboriginal peoples’–evidence from mitochondrial haplogroup P). Susan Walsh from the Erasmus University (Rotterdam, the Netherlands) group won the ISFG price for best oral for her presentation on ‘‘Predicting skin color from DNA using a model based approach’’ and Sarah Leake from the University of Lausanne won best poster for ‘‘Human identification through analysis of the salivary microbiome’’. The last task for this editorial is to thank all the colleagues who sacrificed their time to help organize the meeting or teach a workshop. Some very active people actually did both. We would like to acknowledge all of you, especially Linzi Wilson-Wilde from the National Institute on Forensic Science of the Australian New Zealand Policing Advisory Agency, and are also thanking our government and industry sponsors, and the hospitable people of Melbourne.
Mechthild Prinz* John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York, USA Adrian Linacre Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia *Corresponding author E-mail address: [email protected] (M. Prinz)
