The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has developed a new technique for analyzing DNA. With this method, samples that were once considered too damaged or degraded to be analyzed through conventional methods can now be accurately identified.
The procedure was most recently used to positively identify the remains of 16 additional victims of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center. Only one of several other advanced analysis tech-niques being used in the WTC identifica-tion effort, the new method requires a smaller DNA sample size for positive identification.
