Dna

Doctors sometimes find gonorrhea bacteria in the human body.   Now medical researchers at Northwestern University have found human DNA in the gonorrhea genome. The discovery was detailed Sunday in the American Society for Microbiology's online journal, mBio .   Study co-author Mark Anderson told The Times the work was significant because it helps explain how pathogens (such as Neisseria gonorrhoeae , the bacteria this team studied) and hosts (such as people)

Scientists at Harvard Medical School have created the first-ever book to be written in DNA. And while that book is not exactly a potboiler -- it's "Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves in DNA" by George Church and Ed Regis -- there are 17 billion copies of it. How many books is 17 billion? More than "50 Shades of Grey," "Harry Potter," "The Da Vinci Code," "The Hunger Games," "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," the Bible and the works of Charles Dickens and the next hundred-plus most popular books in the world combined -- times three.

ABOUT THIS SERIES This is the second in a series of occasional articles that will examine how DNA evidence is transforming criminal justice. -- State crime lab analyst Kathryn Troyer was running tests on Arizona's DNA database when she stumbled across two felons with remarkably similar genetic profiles. The men matched at nine of the 13 locations on chromosomes, or loci, commonly used to distinguish people.

The Los Angeles Police Department has reduced the backlog of untested DNA evidence kits from rapes and sexual assaults by two-thirds since last fall, but City Controller Wendy Greuel cautioned Thursday that "we still have a long way to go to resolve this issue." With Police Chief-designate Charles L. Beck at her side, Greuel outlined the results of a new audit one year after former Controller Laura Chick found that the LAPD's backlog of untested kits had grown to more than 7,000, with 217 languishing beyond the legal time limit for prosecuting suspects.

Investigators don't know where 15-year-old Sierra LaMar is, but they are almost certain she is dead. For more than two months, the high school cheerleader's family has been holding out hope. They have organized repeated searches of the Northern California neighborhood where she disappeared and made numerous public appeals for help. On Tuesday, even as authorities announced the arrest of a 21-year-old suspect on suspicion of murder, Marlene LaMar vowed not to stop looking for her daughter.

President Obama may have given credence to a relatively new but questionable law enforcement practice that the rest of the developed world is starting to shun: taking and retaining DNA samples from individuals arrested for a crime but not convicted. That is, putting innocent people's DNA in criminal databases. During an interview with the president last month on the television program "America's Most Wanted," host John Walsh enthusiastically supported the expansion of this practice in the United States, saying, "We now have 18 states who are taking DNA upon arrest.

Re "Untangling the evolutionary roots of monogamy," May 29 Humans are not monogamous. Among others, Islamic and traditional Mormon societies practice polygamy. Osama bin Laden had several wives, and Mitt Romney's ancestors moved to Mexico to practice polygamy after the U.S. government forced Utah to stop it. Bob Marley had 11 children by several different women; I've had three wives and several girlfriends. Although many societies impose monogamy, it has not evolved.

A 40-year-old man who spent more than five months in Los Angeles County jail accused of sexually assaulting a Santa Monica College student on campus was released Thursday after DNA tests threw the case into doubt. Chase Guy Reynolds, who was living in Topanga when he was arrested April 7, was charged after the 18-year-old student identified him as the man who attacked her near the restrooms in the college's library building. The woman told police that the assailant robbed her, licked her stomach and sexually assaulted her, according to court documents.