[dna] The Gift … I really recommend this BBC Radio podcast about what happens when home DNA tests gives their users big surprises.

[crime] The strange case of the ‘time travel’ murder … a look at the fallibility of DNA in crime investigations … ‘In Germany in 2007, traces of DNA belonging to an unknown female were found at the scene of the murder of a police officer. When run through the German database, identical DNA was found to have been present at the scene of five other murders in Germany and France, along with several burglaries and car thefts. In total, the woman’s DNA was found at 40 separate crime scenes. The German authorities spent two years and thousands of hours searching for the culprit, only to discover that the DNA had in fact been present on the swabs the crime scene investigators had been using to collect their samples. The swabs had been accidentally contaminated by a woman working at the factory that produced them.’

[dna] My 23andMe DNA Results … Michael Arrington has his DNA analysed and blogs the results … ‘Some of the information is just for fun – I have “wet earwax,” for example, and don’t have the “alcohol flush” gene that turns people’s faces red when they drink. I don’t detect odors as well as some people.’

[dna] DNA as Destiny — a Wired writer gets his DNA scanned for problems. ‘…the string of genetic letters from my mtDNA readout that indicates I’m mostly Celtic, which makes sense. But other bits of code reveal traces of Southeast Asian DNA, and even a smidgen of Native American and African. This doesn’t quite have the impact of discovering that I’m likely to die of a heart attack. Nor am I surprised about the African and Indian DNA, since my mother’s family has lived in the American South since the 17th century. But Southeast Asian? Sykes laughs. “We are all mutts,” he says. “There is no ethnic purity. Somewhere over the years, one of the thousands of ancestors who contributed to your DNA had a child with someone from Southeast Asia.”‘