Biohistorical materials and contemporary privacy concerns-the forensic case of King Albert I

From collected stamps to hair locks: ethical and legal implications of testing DNA found on privately owned family artifacts

Biological samples containing DNA that is attributed to deceased relatives, can now undergo genetic testing at a reasonable cost due to revolutionary improvements in sampling, sequencing, and analytical techniques. This artifact DNA testing, or 'artDNA', includes genetic analysis of hair locks, stamps, envelopes with saliva traces or teeth. ArtDNA can reveal valuable information about a deceased relative or one's genetic background, but it also presents novel ethical dilemmas and legal uncertainties for genetic researchers and commercial testing services. In this paper, we provide an analysis of some of the unique ethical and legal risks of such testing and provide needed recommendations for practitioners of private family artDNA testing. ArtDNA testing generates ethical and legal risks regarding the privacy and autonomy of deceased individuals, the rights of living relatives over their ancestor's genetic information, and the rights of living persons to control their own genetic information. To mitigate these risks, practitioners can conduct certain preliminary testing to ascertain the identity of a DNA donor and estimate the time that has elapsed postmortem. Generally, the ethical and legal concerns will be higher when a shorter period has passed between the death of the DNA donor and the time of artifact DNA testing. Regardless, all artDNA testing present some risks, and practitioners should exercise professional judgement as necessary.

Archiving time series sewage samples as biological records of built environments

This commentary encourages the regular archiving of nucleic-acid-stabilized serial samples of wastewaters and/or sewage. Stabilized samples would facilitate retrospective reconstitution of built environments’ biological fluids. Biological time capsules would allow retrospective searches for nucleic acids from viruses such as SARS-CoV-2. Current resources for testing need not be diverted if samples are saved in case they become important in the future. Systematic storage would facilitate investigation into the origin and prevalence of viruses and other agents. Comparison of prevalence data from individual and clinical samplings with community wastewater would allow valuable comparison, contrast and correlation among different testing modalities. Current interest is focused on SARS-CoV-2, but archived samples could become valuable in many contexts including surveys for other infectious and chemical agents whose identity is not currently known. Archived time series of wastewater will take their place alongside other biological repositories and records including those from medical facilities, museums, eDNA, living cell and tissue collections. Together these will prove invaluable records of the evolving Anthropocene.

An interdisciplinary study around the reliquary of the late cardinal Jacques de Vitry

The reliquary of Jacques de Vitry, a prominent clergyman and theologian in the early 13th century, has experienced several transfers over the last centuries, which seriously question the attribution of the remains to the late Cardinal. Uncertainty about the year of his birth poses an additional question regarding his age at death in 1240. The reliquary, located in the Saint Marie d'Oigines church, Belgium, was reopened in 2015 for an interdisciplinary study around his relics as well as the Treasure of Oignies, a remarkable cultural heritage notably built from Jacques de Vitry's donation. Anthropological, isotopic and genetic analyses were performed independently on the remains found in the reliquary. Results of the analyses provided evidence that the likelihood that these remains are those of Jacques de Vitry is very high: the remains belong to the same human male individual and the historical tradition about his age is confirmed. In addition, a separate relic (left tibia) was analysed and found to match with the remains of the reliquary (right tibia). The unique Jacques de Vitry's mitre, made of parchment, was sampled non-destructively and the extracted parchment collagen was analysed by a proteomic method in order to determine the animal species. The results showed that, surprisingly, not all parts of the mitre were made from the same species. All together, these findings are expected to fertilize knowledge carried by historical tradition around the relics of Jacques de Vitry and his related cultural heritage.

Rudolf Hess - The Doppelgänger conspiracy theory disproved

The Deputy Führer of the Third Reich Rudolf Hess was captured after a controversial flight to Scotland in 1941. Hess was sentenced to life imprisonment during the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials. He was detained in Berlin's Spandau Prison under the official security designation 'Spandau #7.' Early doubts arose about the true identity of prisoner 'Spandau #7.' This evolved to a frequently espoused conspiracy theory that prisoner 'Spandau #7' was an imposter and not Rudolf Hess. After Hess's reputed 1987 suicide, the family grave became a Neo-Nazi pilgrimage site. In 2011, the grave was abandoned and the family remains cremated. Here we report the forensic DNA analysis of the only known extant DNA sample from prisoner 'Spandau #7' and a match to the Hess male line, thereby refuting the Doppelgänger Theory.

The biological relevance of a medieval king's DNA

The discovery of the presumably lost grave of the controversial English king Richard III in Leicester (U.K.) was one of the most important archaeological achievements of the last decennium. The skeleton was identified beyond reasonable doubt, mainly by the match of mitochondrial DNA to that of living maternal relatives, along with the specific archaeological context. Since the genetic genealogical analysis only involved the DNA sequences of a single 15th century individual and a few reference persons, biologists might consider this investigation a mere curiosity. This mini-review shows that the unique context of a historical king's DNA also has relevance for biological research per se — in addition to the more obvious historical, societal and educational value. In the first place, the historical identification appeared to be a renewed forensic case realising a conservative statement with statistical power based on genetic and non-genetic data, including discordant elements. Secondly, the observation of historical non-paternity events within Richard III's patrilineage has given rise to new research questions about potential factors influencing the extra-pair paternity rate in humans and the importance of biological relatedness for the legal recognition of a child in the past. Thirdly, the identification of a named and dated skeleton with the known historical context serves as a reference for bioarchaeological investigations and studies on the spatio-temporal distribution of particular genetic variance. Finally, the Richard III case revealed privacy issues for living relatives which appear to be inherent to any publication of genetic genealogical data.

Inferring genetic origins and phenotypic traits of George Bähr, the architect of the Dresden Frauenkirche

For historic individuals, the outward appearance and other phenotypic characteristics remain often non-resolved. Unfortunately, images or detailed written sources are only scarcely available in many cases. Attempts to study historic individuals with genetic data so far focused on hypervariable regions of mitochondrial DNA and to some extent on complete mitochondrial genomes. To elucidate the potential of in-solution based genome-wide SNP capture methods - as now widely applied in population genetics - we extracted DNA from the 17th century remains of George Bähr, the architect of the Dresdner Frauenkirche. We were able to identify the remains to be of male origin, showing sufficient DNA damage, deriving from a single person and being thus likely authentic. Furthermore, we were able to show that George Bähr had light skin pigmentation and most likely brown eyes. His genomic DNA furthermore points to a Central European origin. We see this analysis as an example to demonstrate the prospects that new in-solution SNP capture methods can provide for historic cases of forensic interest, using methods well established in ancient DNA (aDNA) research and population genetics.

Paternity testing under the cloak of recreational genetics

Direct-to-consumer (DTC) internet companies are selling widely advertised and highly popular genetic ancestry tests to the broad public. These tests are often classified as falling within the scope of so-called 'recreational genetics', but little is known about the impact of using these services. In this study, a particular focus is whether minors (and under what conditions) should be able to participate in the use of these DTC tests. Current ancestry tests are easily able to reveal whether participants are related and can, therefore, also reveal misattributed paternity, with implications for the minors and adults involved in the testing. We analysed the publicly available privacy policies and terms of services of 43 DTC genetic ancestry companies to assess whether minors are able to participate in testing DTC genetic ancestry, and also whether and how companies ethically account for the potential of paternity inference. Our results indicated that the majority of DTC genetic ancestry testing companies do not specifically address whether minors are able to participate in testing. Furthermore, the majority of the policies and terms of services fail to mention the vulnerability of minors and family members in receiving unexpected information, in particular, in relation to (misattributed) paternity. Therefore, recreational genetics carries both the risk of unintentionally revealing misidentified paternity, and also the risk that fathers will deliberately use these services to test their children's paternity without revealing their intentions to the mother or any other third party.