QIAGEN N.V. announced that Bode Technology, the U.S. forensics laboratory company with a growing presence in other regions, would become the exclusive global commercial partner for the GEDmatch PRO genealogy database, which is used to assist police and forensic teams with investigative comparisons of genetic data.
The multi-year agreement between Qiagen’s subsidiary Verogen and Bode extends the long-standing partnership of two companies in forensic investigative genetic genealogy (FIGG) to further accelerate the use of the portal in law enforcement and identification of human remains. Qiagen has been providing it to customers since the early 2023 acquisition of its subsidiary Verogen, a company in equipping forensic science laboratories and criminal investigators to use next-generation sequencing (NGS) to gain deeper insights.
The forensic investigative genetic genealogy solution has been used around the world to solve cases that could not be solved with traditional genetic fingerprinting. When capillary electrophoresis (CE) based analysis fails to yield an identification, NGS can find patterns of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) as the basis for finding genetic associations in the genealogy database.
Combining Qiagen’s expertise in forensic products and Bode Technology’s in forensic services will also further boost the use of Qiagen’s next-generation sequencing (NGS) products for use in human identification (HID) and forensic investigations.
As part of the partnership, Bode will manage all commercial transactions for the portal globally, while Qiagen will continue to develop new features with input from Bode’s genealogy experts. Bode will maintain the highest level of data security as the users will continue to own their case data and no additional identifying information will be shared with Bode.
Qiagen’s subsidiary will continue to have sole responsibility and manage the separate Gedmatch consumer database and its free DNA comparison-and-analysis website, which are not affected by this partnership.
More information: Qiagen
