Genetics researcher Yaniv Erlich of the Whitehead Institute developed a technique in his lab that gave him tools to prove a DNA database.
The tool allowed him to quickly find a type of DNA pattern that looks like stutters among billions of chemical letters in human DNA. Those little stutters – short tandem repeats – are inherited.
Genealogy websites use repeats on the Y chromosome, the one unique to men, to identify men by their surnames, an indicator of ancestry.
So, Erlich asked, could he take a man's entire DNA sequence, pick out the short tandem repeats on his Y chromosome, search a genealogy site, discover the man's surname and then fully identify the man?
He tested it with the genome of Craig Ventner, a DNA sequencing pioneer who posted his own DNA sequence online, and got two hits, including Ventner's.
“Out of 300 million people in the United States, we got it down to two people,” Erlich said.