Guest Posted July 11, 2014 Share Posted July 11, 2014 Key point in the ARS article.... "For some unfathomable reason, team bigfoot didn't use it. Instead, they took a single human chromosome and got some software to line up as much as it could to that." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted August 5, 2014 Share Posted August 5, 2014 Everyone, Thanks for the lively discussion. Attached is my second paper on the Ketchum project. It deals with the mitochondrial DNA, which everyone just assumed was all human. You will enjoy this. Look for my third paper in a couple of weeks. It deals with specific gene sequences from the paper and the Sasquatch Genome Project website. Haskell Hart August 4, 2014 But the Mitochondrial DNA is all human.pdf Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
southernyahoo Posted August 5, 2014 Share Posted August 5, 2014 hvhart, do you agree that the mtDNA results for sample #1 is fully human with no outliers? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted August 5, 2014 Share Posted August 5, 2014 Yes, Sample #1 is a normal T2b haplogroup with 2 extra mutations. It falls well within the Poisson Distribution of probabilities. Unfortunately we have no nuDNA sequences for this sample for corroboration. Because of the 1 - 10k X per cell advantage of mtDNA over nuDNA, it is possible that the sample is contaminated with human DNA, not representative of the bulk of the sample. There is nothing to suggest this however. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
southernyahoo Posted August 5, 2014 Share Posted August 5, 2014 Do you propose that a universal mtDNA primer be used on that sample to sus that out? wouldn't it be easier to get the answer that way? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted August 5, 2014 Share Posted August 5, 2014 Yes. A good idea. cyt b, cyt c, or 12S RNA would be good choices. The fact that no nonhuman primers were used in the study makes me suspicious. I recommended this to Ketchum a year ago. Do you propose that a universal mtDNA primer be used on that sample to sus that out? wouldn't it be easier to get the answer that way? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
southernyahoo Posted August 6, 2014 Share Posted August 6, 2014 You didn't read in her paper where she says she did use universal primers? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted August 6, 2014 Share Posted August 6, 2014 By "nonhuman" I did not mean "universal," and I should have been more specific. Specific dog and bear primers should be used, for example on S140 and S26 respectively. Universal primers can give unintelligible results for species mixtures. They are best used when a single species is known to be present (i.e. a controlled sample), but which species is not known. Though Ketchum says she used both human and universal primers on the mtDNA side, she never says what the results were for the latter - the interpretation. Amplification is one thing, interpreting the results (identifying the sequence) is another. Notice that she states in her Table 2 on p.14 one SNP for S26. I found 16 using her Supp. Data 2 mutations by hand from the Phylotree and by using the mtDNAble software, and regardless of whether H1a or.H5e is the haplogroup (neither match well). This would be a perfect example of where a bear primer might be revealing. If I got the results I got in my last paper, I'd certainly do some more experiments with nonhuman (not universal) primers. Something is not right with eight of 18 mtDNA sequences. All the same can be said for the nuclear DNA results in her Tables 4, 5, and 7. If the results are mixed and not completely human, the logical thing to do is first to try nonhuman primers before proclaiming a new species or a hybrid. That is unless you have a foregone conclusion or an agenda or an advocacy to support. There certainly was enough of S26 to do more experiments. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
southernyahoo Posted August 6, 2014 Share Posted August 6, 2014 Personally I think sequencing the whole genome was more than what was needed. But starting out, you are attempting to simply identify samples, and when you don't know what the sample is from, you wash it and use a universal mammalian primer right? You don't want the contamination and you have to cast a wide net to get a sequence that is identifiable right? This is what Sykes did. If you know one species is present (the donor of the sample) and have no use for any contamination then you can just use the corresponding primer right? like after you've used the universal? You wouldn't use random animal primers unless the universal primer gave a mixed double profile right? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted August 8, 2014 Share Posted August 8, 2014 Yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes. I just don't think Ketchum et al. followed through like you proposed above. I Iooked at the hair analysis on your website, and think there may be a mixture of different hairs. It's hard to tell for sure though from the pictures on the website. The different opinions of so called "experts" says this is not a very precise method of identification. The FBI website has two good articles with pictures. It would have been better if Ketchum et al. had made some measurements of all their hairs to compare to known stats of various species, e. g. diameter and medulla diameter. We see pictures of only a very few select examples in the paper with no numerical data except a general statement about diameters. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
southernyahoo Posted August 8, 2014 Share Posted August 8, 2014 Yes it would be very painstaking to have done such analysis on every hair sample from the morphological characteristics of each one to the mito preliminary ID to full genome. Not all of which would have been within Ketchum's expertise. So with the outsourcing method you get what you pay for as we could say. All the data points may not have been covered in those contracted costs. Concerning my sample, I think it would be unlikely to have hairs in that collection of two different species, they are too consistent internally. They vary in length from 2" to 8" with examples of both extremes not having cut ends. They are about to be independently tested on DNA, so hold tight. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted August 8, 2014 Share Posted August 8, 2014 I can't wait!! If you want an independent interpretation of the sequences I would be happy to do that - FREE. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
southernyahoo Posted August 8, 2014 Share Posted August 8, 2014 I'll be in touch here, if they are offered. The testing is free, so I may only get some sort of statement from the tester/ scientist. We might have to pry it out of him if thats the case. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted August 8, 2014 Share Posted August 8, 2014 The attached file has two good FBI references for general identification of hairs. From the pictures of human and bear hair, it's clear that your pic second from the left on the TexLABigfoot website is neither. The medulla is too wide. What do you think? It falls between a dog and a horse, but might be neither. The FBI pictures don't include all possible animals, certainly not a bigfoot. Microscopy of Hair FBI.pdf Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
southernyahoo Posted August 9, 2014 Share Posted August 9, 2014 (edited) Yes the Medulla is wide ( about half the hair width if not slightly less) with a straight uniform margin, and this is one feature that is different from typical human hairs when the medulla is continuous ( mostly in pubic hair) and more like an animal. The pigment in the cortex has fine and dark granules which is uniformly distributed like humans and other primates IMO. The medulla does vary from absent near the root to trace further out to amorphous continuous and finally the solid straight appearance before fading out again at the naturally tapered distal end. This is an illustration of it below. This one shows a comparison of the suspect sample where the hair shows an amorphous medulla and human pubic hair. Human on the right, same magnification. Edited August 9, 2014 by southernyahoo 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts