Speaker 1: What's up everyone, and welcome back to the program. In
Speaker 1: this episode, we're headed back up to Moscow where we're
Speaker 1: diving right back into the unredacted IgG transcripts, and once
Speaker 1: again it's Ann Taylor doing the questioning, and this time
Speaker 1: the witness is Daniel Hellwig. And like in the previous episodes,
Speaker 1: when I say question, that's Ann Taylor and answer is
Speaker 1: mister Hellwig, Miss Taylor. The next witness is Daniel Hellwig
Speaker 1: the clerk. Do you solemnly swear or affirm that the
Speaker 1: testimony you're about to give now before the court will
Speaker 1: be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
Speaker 1: Mister Hellwig? I do. The court go ahead, Miss Taylor.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Daniel Hellwig having been duly sworn testified as follows,
Speaker 1: Miss Taylor. Good morning, answer, Good morning. Question. Will you
Speaker 1: please state your full name? Answer? My name is Daniel Hellwig.
Speaker 1: Question what do you do for a living Answer? I'm
Speaker 1: currently the friend director at Inner Mountain Forensics. We're a
Speaker 1: five oh one three c nonprofit and our main mission
Speaker 1: is pushing forward new and cutting edge DNA technology, assisting
Speaker 1: different agencies, law enforcement and otherwise with education, training and
Speaker 1: consultation on those. Our main focus right now is to
Speaker 1: help fund these cases specifically, and most of our mission
Speaker 1: is revolved around forensic investigative genetic genealogy or FIG. Question
Speaker 1: when you say help fund these cases as a nonprofit,
Speaker 1: what do you mean? Answer a variety of different We
Speaker 1: actually allow people to submit cases that they may be
Speaker 1: having problems getting the revenue and resources to move it forward,
Speaker 1: and then we evaluate it. So this could be We've
Speaker 1: worked and tried to assist, and mainly I think most
Speaker 1: of our work is in smaller agencies that don't have
Speaker 1: nearly as many resources to further their case work with
Speaker 1: this technology. But we've done work with law enforcement, medical
Speaker 1: examiners offices, and defense, especially the Innocence Project. Question what
Speaker 1: did you do before you worked at this nonprofit? Answer?
Speaker 1: I've been a forensic DNA for twenty plus years. I
Speaker 1: have a bachelor's in biology and chemistry from Viturbo University
Speaker 1: and a master's in forensic science from Marshall University. I
Speaker 1: started my career at the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory
Speaker 1: as an intern there and moved on to various public laboratories.
Speaker 1: I worked in forensic DNA at the New Mexico Department
Speaker 1: of Public Safety and the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.
Speaker 1: I then started in the private sector. I worked for
Speaker 1: Sorens and Forensics in Salt Lake City, Utah, in a
Speaker 1: variety of different jobs there. Initially I was a DNA
Speaker 1: technical leader, essentially the quality manager of the DNA section,
Speaker 1: but moved into executive management as the laboratory director. In
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen. I began with the inter Mountain Forensics as
Speaker 1: a founder. I'll refer to that sometimes as IMF. We
Speaker 1: were up until July of last year. Our mission was
Speaker 1: not only funding cases, education outreach, but also we established
Speaker 1: and operated a fully functioning forensic DNA lab our. Mission
Speaker 1: in that realm was to again continue with cutting edge
Speaker 1: DNA technology and specifically we sought to operate and utilize
Speaker 1: a forensic investigative genetic genealogy support laboratory. Question what does
Speaker 1: that mean? Answer? So our goal in this We had
Speaker 1: a fully function in laboratory in that we did what
Speaker 1: I'll call traditional forensics STRs as mentioned previously, but we
Speaker 1: also wanted to implement this new technology forensic investigative genetic
Speaker 1: genealogy and laboratory processes behind it. Specifically in this case,
Speaker 1: you're talking about forensic snips single nucleotide polymorphisms the court,
Speaker 1: so you need to slow down a little bit. You
Speaker 1: don't enunciate particularly well and so you need to go
Speaker 1: slower the witness. I promise question. Let me see if
Speaker 1: I can understand and your work right before the five
Speaker 1: oh one C three getting into the forensic investigative genetic
Speaker 1: genealogy world. Do I understand that your work was to
Speaker 1: do the part all the long steps until you get
Speaker 1: to the SNP and then it would be handed off
Speaker 1: for a genealogist to do the other part of the work. Answer.
Speaker 1: Beyond identifying SNPs, it's to generate and upload file an
Speaker 1: end product that would then be handed off to an
Speaker 1: investigative genetic genealogist to continue the research. So essentially our
Speaker 1: laboratory started had the ability to start from sample from
Speaker 1: evidentary item to DNA extraction, which is essentially popping cells open,
Speaker 1: pulling DNA out and washing all the residual material away.
Speaker 1: And then traditional forensics where you're doing short tandem repeats
Speaker 1: repetitive DNA that repeats over and over and you simply
Speaker 1: count them to our specific targets which was SNP's where
Speaker 1: we did DNA sequencing, looking at all the different letters
Speaker 1: within the genome and pulling out the relevant single new
Speaker 1: ucleotide polymorphisms that were specifically associated through genealogy, generating through
Speaker 1: a pretty extensive process what I'll call an upload file.
Speaker 1: These are files that contain all of these SNPs single
Speaker 1: nucleotide polymorphisms that contain the information that's needed for upload
Speaker 1: into these databases. Okay, I'm going to go back a
Speaker 1: little bit with you. So in the traditional str we've
Speaker 1: heard some about that today. You said splitting the DNA
Speaker 1: open and washing it. Answer. Yes, that's essentially the very
Speaker 1: simplified version of a DNA extraction. You can think of
Speaker 1: this biological material, these cells as little tiny water filled
Speaker 1: balloons with nuclear material with DNA inside of it. DNA extraction,
Speaker 1: similar to previous testimony, is just popping those cells open,
Speaker 1: pulling the DNA out, and washing all of the cellular garbage.
Speaker 1: If you will out to generate an extract, it can
Speaker 1: then go down several different pathways depending on what you need.
Speaker 1: Traditional forensic testing STRs short tandem repeats is taking that
Speaker 1: DNA and looking at repetitive sequences and counting how many
Speaker 1: repeats are there. The best way I can explain this
Speaker 1: is if you had the word cat and that was
Speaker 1: the specific DNA letters that you were looking for. You
Speaker 1: could repeat the word cat eight times. That would be
Speaker 1: short tandem repeat cat repeat at A times. I would
Speaker 1: call that an eight. You have DNA from mom and dad,
Speaker 1: so you have two copies of this, So you have
Speaker 1: an eight and maybe another eight from mom and dad.
Speaker 1: The problem there is that you're actually looking at the
Speaker 1: specific letters. So a three letter word like dog would
Speaker 1: be completely different. We've got an eight repeat STR and
Speaker 1: an eight repeat str that have different sequences but still
Speaker 1: have the same short tandem repeat number. SMPS single nucleotide
Speaker 1: polymorphism is actually looking at the DNA sequence. So if
Speaker 1: we were to look at an SNP, let's say we
Speaker 1: were particularly interested in the A and cat, we would
Speaker 1: sequence that DNA and then go into the sequence and say,
Speaker 1: at this location we have an A, and we have
Speaker 1: an A from mom and maybe an A from Dad.
Speaker 1: That is the generation of an SNP profile. Same concept,
Speaker 1: but we're dialing down to the specific letter. In question
Speaker 1: question have you done both kinds of work? Answer? Yes?
Speaker 1: In my before IMF I worked at several different laboratories,
Speaker 1: all using traditional forensics SDRs and ysdrs. Question if I
Speaker 1: understood that part about the water balloon right, It's one
Speaker 1: water balloon, same water balloon, same process of popping it open,
Speaker 1: stripping out the stuff you don't need, and then it's
Speaker 1: where you go from there that makes the difference between
Speaker 1: an SDR and an SNP. Ultimately. Answer correct, It's all
Speaker 1: associating to the same DNA extract, and that's similar to
Speaker 1: what the Idaho State Police Lab does as well. Question so,
Speaker 1: the process of getting the DNA water balloon open so
Speaker 1: that you can strip things off, does it matter how
Speaker 1: you do that? Answer? Well, there's a variety of different
Speaker 1: ways to do that, but in forensics there are some
Speaker 1: specific and kind of common tools that we use that
Speaker 1: the process to get there can vary somewhat. However, it's
Speaker 1: a fairly standard practice to use some of the same
Speaker 1: tools within the forensic DNA community. Question I think I
Speaker 1: understand the repeats as looking for patterns, but the SNP
Speaker 1: is looking at the individual characteristic answer individual letter nucleotide.
Speaker 1: So if DNA is made up of billions and billions
Speaker 1: of letters, STR is looking at repetitive sequences and counting
Speaker 1: the repeats, and SNP is looking at specific letters, specific
Speaker 1: nucleotides on that genome. Question. All right, I want to
Speaker 1: talk about the whole process. How you get from an
Speaker 1: SNP to splitting the water balloon open. I'm with you there,
Speaker 1: So what do you do after we get that stripped
Speaker 1: off answer? If we're going down the path of forensic SNPs.
Speaker 1: There's a few different ways you can do that. There
Speaker 1: is one way is essentially targeted practice. We're looking at
Speaker 1: SNPs in question, and we're going to focus on those
Speaker 1: SNPs and do what is called an amplification PCR, basically
Speaker 1: a DNA photocopier of that sequence that specific letter and
Speaker 1: a little bit around it to specifically target an SNP
Speaker 1: in question. The other technique is something more attuned to
Speaker 1: the whole genome sequencing. Again, there's a variety of different
Speaker 1: ways you can do this, but the idea here is
Speaker 1: we're going to sequence the entire genome, the entire length
Speaker 1: of DNA on this particular extract, and then we're going
Speaker 1: to pull out the SNPs that we need, the relevant
Speaker 1: ones that we're looking for. This can be done. I
Speaker 1: will refer to that as whole genome sequencing, acknowledging the
Speaker 1: fact that there's a variety of different ways you can
Speaker 1: accomplish that. Once you sequence the DNA, it comes off
Speaker 1: of the instrument in question, and there's several different instruments
Speaker 1: you can use, but for the most part, it turns
Speaker 1: into raw data, and that raw data is typically found
Speaker 1: in a file called the fastq file. This raw data
Speaker 1: is massive, it has an insane amount of information, and
Speaker 1: it's not refined in a way that we can actually
Speaker 1: utilize it. So the steps from taking the raw data
Speaker 1: to actually getting that upload file. That end product for
Speaker 1: upload into these databases is bioinformatics, essentially a software that
Speaker 1: goes into this massive amounts of data and pulls out
Speaker 1: the things that we're looking for. Question, is all the
Speaker 1: software the same or all bioinformatics programs? Is that all
Speaker 1: the same? Answer? No, Each, as far as I can tell,
Speaker 1: each laboratory has their own version of bioinformatics that they
Speaker 1: use to get the sequence data into usable results. Question
Speaker 1: if I understand where we are, We popped open the balloon,
Speaker 1: we put the DNA in a sequencer, created a raw
Speaker 1: data file called fastq file, and now we need to
Speaker 1: do bioinformatics to get an SNP answer. Right question, Okay,
Speaker 1: what happens from there? Answer? So in the bioinformatic pathway,
Speaker 1: you're doing multiple things. Again, you can think of this
Speaker 1: as a DNA sequence that the sequencer has given you
Speaker 1: a truckload of information. They're essentially puzzle pieces. The first
Speaker 1: thing that we're going to do is reemerging. So we're
Speaker 1: going to take all the puzzle pieces that are the
Speaker 1: same and we're going to use them to paint the
Speaker 1: best picture of that information. You can think of this
Speaker 1: as if we're sequencing the DNA this human genome multiple times,
Speaker 1: hopefully ten, fifteen, thirty times. Our samples in forensics are
Speaker 1: typically difficult, so we don't tend to get that much
Speaker 1: information or that level. Essentially, we're trying to sequence this
Speaker 1: entire genome multiple times to add more context in what
Speaker 1: we're getting e merging. We're talking in DNA sequences that
Speaker 1: we have multiple copies of, and we're combining them into
Speaker 1: one the best fit for that particular fragment of DNA.
Speaker 1: While we still have puzzle pieces to put together. The
Speaker 1: next thing is mapping the bioinformatic way will map all
Speaker 1: these puzzle pieces and put them into the human genome
Speaker 1: in the way that they're supposed to be that takes
Speaker 1: multiple fragments and lines them up in the right manner.
Speaker 1: Once it's mapped, we are going to start to be
Speaker 1: able to find the particular SNPs that we're looking for.
Speaker 1: We have a human genome with a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: different letters in different positions. We can say, all right,
Speaker 1: these are the relevant SNPs that we're looking for. Genealogy
Speaker 1: based informative markers. We want to pull these SNPs out,
Speaker 1: see what the call is there, and send that up
Speaker 1: to an upload file. In some cases we don't have
Speaker 1: all of the information. We're missing some sequence data. We've
Speaker 1: maybe gotten eighty percent of the genome and most of
Speaker 1: the SNPs are missing. There's a process to fill in
Speaker 1: those gaps called imputation. Imputation is in most bioinformatic packages. Essentially,
Speaker 1: we know that the letters are in front of this
Speaker 1: particular spot we're missing, and we know that the letters
Speaker 1: are behind what this particular spot that is missing. We
Speaker 1: can look at all the human genomes and impute estimate
Speaker 1: that most likely the letter in the position that we're
Speaker 1: looking for. Once we're through imputation and calls, we're going
Speaker 1: to use Bioinformatic package to pull out smps that we're
Speaker 1: looking for and put them into the format that will
Speaker 1: be usable for upload into these databases. At IMF, we
Speaker 1: actually generated two files, one specifically to ged match pro
Speaker 1: database and one specific to the family Tree ft DNA database.
Speaker 1: In these files, ged match Pro we typically got around
Speaker 1: five hundred and fifty thousand plus SNPs that we were
Speaker 1: looking for, and the Family Tree DNA database upwards of
Speaker 1: six hundred to six hundred and fifty thousand smps. The
Speaker 1: end product there though, is a text file or some
Speaker 1: sort of upload file which could be in text format
Speaker 1: or Excel format, but essentially what it is is a
Speaker 1: file with all of these smps the calls at the
Speaker 1: SNP locations in a format that allows them to be
Speaker 1: uploaded into the database. At this point we hand it
Speaker 1: off to the investigative genetic genealogist to do the research.
Speaker 1: Question the upload databases you mentioned to ged match pro
Speaker 1: and Family Tree DNA answer, that's correct, question. Why did
Speaker 1: you mention those answer? Those are the two databases that
Speaker 1: allow law enforcement searches. They have specific terms of services
Speaker 1: that give a portion of that database, those that have
Speaker 1: consented to do so to law enforcement to search for
Speaker 1: human remains in some cases and in criminal cases. All Right,
Speaker 1: we're going to wrap up right there, and in the
Speaker 1: next episode dealing with the topic, we're going to pick
Speaker 1: up with question so in this lab process to get
Speaker 1: to the SNP. If you'd like to contact me, you
Speaker 1: can do that at Bobby Kapuchi at ProtonMail dot com.
Speaker 1: That's bo b b Y c ap u Cci at
Speaker 1: ProtonMail dot com, or if you prefer, you can find
Speaker 1: me on x at Bobby Underscore c ap u Cci.
Speaker 1: All of the links that go with this episode can
Speaker 1: be found in the description box.