Development of High-Throughput Method to Isolate Sperm DNA

Project Summary for 2003-IJ-CX-K103 This award will focus on developing a faster, more effective, less-labor intensive, and more cost-effective method to isolated sperm DNA from sexual assault samples to address the backlog of unprocessed biological evidence through the implementation of vacuum driven filtration. The vaccuum filtration would require only pipetteing steps and can be readily automated in a 96 well format. Sperm are collected on 2 micron track-etch filters, while the epithelial cell DNA is collected in the filtrate. The filters are then washed and the sperm DNA is solubilized with a reducing agent and collected in the filtrate. nca/ncf