By Ian Ross
With Georgia on his mind, Lakehead University’s business development officer John Guerard returned from a FedNor trade mission to Atlanta last month with some “promising” leads in marketing the school’s paleo-DNA lab.
Lakehead was part of an 18-member delegation taking part in the Team Northern Ontario trade mission to Atlanta from April 27 to May 2.
It was the university’s first international foray to showcase its faculty expertise, technical capabilities, distance-learning opportunities and its new advanced-technology building now under construction.
“This is the first big step for the DNA lab in marketing,” says Guerard, who met with law enforcement agencies to promote the school’s forensic services.
The lab has done some past work for the Ontario chief coroner’s office and some police forces, and hopes to establish the same ties in the States.
“There is quite a large backlog of forensic work in the U.S., as well as in Canada, and I’m in the process of following up with a couple of police forces to possibly do some work for them.”
Atlanta is the home base for many Fortune 500 companies and large university-based research and medical centres.
“We’re looking to partner up with different universities to do not only ancient DNA research, but modern research.
“There are a number of schools down there that we might be able to collaborate with,” says Guerard, taking into account Lakehead’s upgraded dual status with Sudbury for the northern medical school.
Lakehead prides itself on being one of the few universities in the world capable of extracting and amplifying DNA from old samples and bones.
Other DNA labs have been doing this type of forensic analysis for years, Guerard says, but Lakehead has created a special, more precise technique developed by one of their researchers, Dr. Carney Matheson, who is in the process of patenting it.
“(Matheson’s) process is state of the art. It’s far more sensitive than most forensic labs will have at this point.”
Since the lab was established in 1996, Lakehead scientists have participated in an impressive list of international projects analysing Egyptian mummies, working on human rights violation cases for the United Nations and most recently, studying the remains of an exhumed Titanic victim.
The lab has been working to identify the bones of a six-month-old baby who died when the Titanic sank in 1912 for a documentary, which will be profiled this fall on the Public Broadcasting System.
The body was recovered at sea and buried in a Halifax cemetery.
Thunder Bay researchers were able to extract DNA from the tiny bone fragments, but have not pinpointed the victim’s identity.
Working on international projects should prove to be a feather in their cap, in appealing to potential partners and business clients “because it’s hard to describe to people what you do in terms of the paleo-DNA lab and being from Northern Ontario, it’s difficult to get across what you actually do,” says Guerard.
“The Titanic was definitely a great marketing tool for us, as well as a great project to be involved in.”
The lab specialists also worked with a United Nations’ team of forensic scientists in East Timor, processing very degraded samples from decomposed genocide corpses in the Thunder Bay lab.Guerard says the paleo-DNA laboratory plans to further offer other consultation services such as paternity testing to enable the facility to be a self-sustaining entity, with any revenues funnelled back into the university to fund new research and experimental programs.
