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TITLE

How Modern Methods are Overcoming Ancient Problems at the Missing in Action Recovery and Identification Project 

SPEAKER

Brent Lehman

INSTITUTE

University of Wisconsin-Madison

SUMMARY

The Missing in Action Recovery and Identification Project at the University of Wisconsin – Madison is a mission to retrieve personnel killed in overseas conflicts by performing excavations and research assistance to families of the missing. In the past this has been accomplished by combining military archives with eyewitness accounts and familial records to locate probable sites for excavation and recovery. Once potential identification elements are reclaimed, a portion can be sequenced to generate a putative identification. It is common that recovered elements are not the ideal source material for DNA extraction and subsequent sequencing library assembly due to combinations of elemental exposure and scarcity of materials. To overcome this obstacle, we have been treating these as ancient DNA samples that require modern DNA extraction and library assembly methodologies. Here I will report how I have employed these techniques to advance the Recovery and Identification mission. 

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