Comments on: To Catch Hamburglars, McDonald’s Installs DNA-Spraying Security System

By: robert

robert — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 16:01:39 +0000

this is a pretty cool security system Too hightech for my home but very very cool.

By: Eliza Strickland

Eliza Strickland — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 16:53:47 +0000

Ha! Good one, Violent J.

By: Violent J

Violent J — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 16:14:53 +0000

DNA, how does it work?

By: AC

AC — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 02:01:15 +0000

Next week: Witchdoctors paid to place curses on fast-food thieves as they flee the store; robberies comitted by ‘conservatives’ drop 98 per-cent.

By: shadegem

shadegem — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 19:00:53 +0000

“Much of the spray’s effectiveness, he said, comes from the mystique surrounding DNA. “No one really knows what it is,” he said. “No one really knows how it works.”
New York Times, really? This doesn’t seem very approriate. For one, it’s the prescence of the DNA ( for oligonucleotides is too long for this comment), that marks a person, not how it interacts with the things around it. That would mean it would change appearance for every person it lands on and therefore there would be no certain marking. The appearance under UV light means it has a marker added into it. If placed under a UV light for too long, the DNA would break down, just like what happens to our DNA in our skin cells when we go unprotected for a long time on very sunny days. This means it’s not going to hold up in court systems unless a well-found analysis is recorded on it. Which probably won’t happen for a burger robbery.
For two, genetics manipulates DNA in order to understand it and use it for its own devices.
For three, one of the main problems would be finding and then scanning the bad guys when the stuff isn’t readily visible. Granted, they’d be less likely to change clothes immediately afterward, but it’s still not extremely effective. And how many people have a UV light on them?
Please, feel free to correct me. I’m not sure if oligonucleotides have different properties than DNA in one’s cells, so I’m assuming they are similar (since they’re just DNA fragments formed by a machine with known DNA components)

By: leah

leah — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 17:02:49 +0000

hi mrs.wachtel.

By: sasha :)

sasha :) — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 17:02:12 +0000

HELLO IM GONNA PRINT THIS FOR BIOLOGY MRS.Wachtel… tehe

By: sami

sami — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 17:00:13 +0000

um that is wierd hahahahahhah WEIRD YO…

By: Georg

Georg — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 16:20:09 +0000

“Synthetic DNA”
is Bigspeak, I think. I guess they use oligonucleotides,
which need not more than half a dozen units to
be “specific”.
Of course DNA helps a lot to impress plain folks.
Georg