buried the lede, imho: we have enough DNA profiles to match their sampling up with.
I'm always stunned when reminded that a full genome sequencing has gone from Human Genome Project's extreme cost and (edit: glacial) speed to using seqencing as the easy button.
I hear we've also got machines that'll seqence, fit on a bench, and cost high five/low six figures. They've got issues to work out still though- iirc something about damaged sections causing issues.
four figures these days. fits in your hand. nanopore is a revolution. https://nanoporetech.com/products/sequence/minion
there’s youtubers that have videos about doing this in a home wetlab. very achievable. some amateur soil biologists using this to try and sample microdiversity as the planet… humanifies.
I have a mol bio home lab, and decided against it because while the devices themselves are reasonably priced, the flow cells are an expensive disposable.
I use Plasmidsaurus instead: Pay them $15/sample online, drop off the tubes in a styrophoam box labeled with a dinosaur in a nearby university building; get the results next morning. They use Oxford Nanopore, but are loading your sample along with many other samples to maximize flow cell use.
Ex-Nanopore employee here. One interesting thing we heard about internally was that OceanX[0] has one of our GridION[1] devices (slightly larger, and built-in compute) that they were using to track whales in the ocean by sequencing DNA found in seawater. Really cool.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OceanX
[1] https://nanoporetech.com/products/sequence/gridion
Do you have links to these youtubers? Sounds interesting
Not OP, but The Thought Emporium is a personal favourite. Their name belies the hands-on nature of their videos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0_q-fD_lyU
Paleontology has been really helped by the ease of sequencing, to the point where many evolutionary arguments are moot. Humans are apes, birds are dinosaurs. Some people still dispute it, but not with evidence on their side.
> Some people still dispute it
I particularly like this Futurama clip on the subject. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VzGtk7Ip4NU
> birds are dinosaurs
Not that I doubt that, but how does DNA help, when we have no DNA samples from dinosaurs?
https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/scientists-discover-well-pres...
That claim is widely believed to be bullshit.
Should be noted, though, the cheaper/quicker techniques do still come with compromises compared to the "gold standard" technique used for the Human Genome Project.