Super Bowl Footballs Get The DNA Touch 194
theodp writes "All 120 Super Bowl XL footballs will be marked with a drop of synthetic DNA to thwart potential counterfeiters (free reg. required to read) who might be tempted to sell phony game-used Super Bowl footballs, which can be worth thousands of dollars. Exposed to a specific laser frequency, the DNA glows to a bright green. 'The chance of replicating this exact DNA sequence is one in 33 trillion,' said the president of PSA/DNA Authentication Services."
Full text (Score:5, Informative)
Fuck LATimes reg; real link. (Score:3, Informative)
NFL Again Uses PSA/DNA to Prevent Super Bowl Footballs Fraud [psacard.com]
...damn, they're foolish. (Score:3, Informative)
I mean, they're willing to go the distance to make the balls looks authentic, it can be done.
Hot air (Score:2, Informative)
Re:120? (Score:3, Informative)
No. But the unused balls aren't sold as Superbowl-used balls.
"Does the average game even have 120 plays"
Nope. Roughly 60 plays + special plays (kickoffs, punts, etc). Likely fewer in this game, since both teams have potent running games.
do they really switch them every single play?
For the first half. Then they use only(!) 12 balls for the 2nd half. It's in the article.
Re:Not a zero sum game..... (Score:4, Informative)
Your argument against the amount paid to a top sports player is basically a Short Term/Long Term fallacy, a subset of "Excluded Middle".
The reason a guy gets paid millions to toss a ball, or something similar is because millions of fans watch. They pay for viewing, they watch ads, hell, they have tailgate parties prior to games, and you can bet they buy a good deal of merchandise for those parties alone. Organized sports is big business, and having popular players (those who can throw the ball well) brings in added revenue for the teams that can win. Just take a look at the prices of the footballs in the article!
It boils down to money. The team owners/franchises want to make more money, the fans want to see more/better games, and are happy to spend their money to do so.
Ironically, when I was in Africa in 1990 building a medical clinic, all the locals loved playing soccer, and whenever a newspaper was around, everyone gawked over the world soccer scores. It was near religion to them. They also had a better knowledge of North American boxing than I ever have had. And yet, many of these people owned only one set of clothes, and most did not have electricity, and certanly not any clean water.
And so, these very people I was trying to help were caught up in organized sports, where, as you say the funds from the massive North American endevours could be used to help the people in Africa. You are right of course, but it seems that people everywhere, on the average are sports nuts. This does not make people bad, it just makes them human.
We, the slashdot geeks are a different breed.
Re:odds for random or deliberate attempt?? (Score:5, Informative)
You'd be amazed if you knew what their profit margin must be. Oligos like that cost about 10 bucks for enough to probably detectably tag all 120 footballs, and you can synthesize any sequence you want. A couple of bucks for that fluoresence dye, some ink, and I bet it costs them about a quarter a ball altogether. You could even do this sort of thing yourself for not much more. Most DNA synthesis companies will happily do business with private citizens. The only substantial cost would be verifiying an object that someone brings in, but even that just requires a half-decent molecular biology tech and some not-too-expensive equipment. You don't need to actually sequence the thing to verify that it matches a reference sample - you can just cheaply and quickly test binding affinity. I'll bet they charge for verification, anyway. So this whole scheme is probably the next-best thing to printing money.
(IAAMB - molecular biologist)
Re:...damn, they're foolish. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:120? (Score:2, Informative)
I fixed that for you.
Re:Perhaps (Score:5, Informative)
DNA oxidizes, right? I mean I'm just a lowly ex-research biologist who only worked with the stuff for a period of about 3.5 years; however, I wouldn't expect that base sequence pair to hold together for very long.
Plus DNA doesn't glow green (unless they've discovered something new). There are dyes that can work their way into the double helix and make it appear red (due to the dye being red), but shining a laser at DNA would probably result in a lot of disconnected (or abnormally bonded) base pairs, and a broken (or oxidized) ribose backbone.
I'm suspecting that they are actually tagging the DNA covalently with a flourescent marker that glows green. Such "bonded" markers have been available for quite some time (and in a variety of colors), so such dyes would be easily available to the football engineers (hehe) out there. As the parent poster suggested, then all you would have to do is add the marker to the existing DNA on any old football, and apart from sampling and sequencing the DNA, most people would be statisfied at first glance.
Even though DNA sequencing is getting cheaper every day (I imagine a private individual would have to pay a bit more, but in-house services usually charge around $4 to $8 per sample) so cost won't be a factor. However, the results can be forged, and not many people will tolerate "oversampling" of their prized $5000 football. "Excuse me sir, by may I take a slice?"
Finally, the DNA would oxidize over time, leaving less and less material that would test positive.
Provided that the base pair sequence is published (as it would have to be to allow verification), then sequencing it from scratch is a little more expensive, but an everyday task. And don't get into "authentic" vs. "knock-off" molecule debates please: if all of the atoms are in the same places, the orgins of both molecules are indistinguishable.
What would be cooler is to transgenically insert a sequence into pig zygotes that produces a protein which resists oxidation and flouresces with laser light. Then the whole football would glow, but it's glow would increase with intensity of the right wavelength. Players might complain about it being harder to see a slightly glowing football, but such complaints usually fall on deaf ears, and it's not like the football design never changes (or that we lack "neon" footballs today).
Re:Perhaps (Score:5, Informative)
I assume that they're just attaching a flourescent molecule to the DNA so they can find it for sequencing when there's a dispute about authenticity. Of course, there's nothing to stop anyone from sequencing the DNA on an authentic ball, and then synthesizing more DNA with the same sequence. It's only 22 or 23 bases, and you can order customized DNA of that length pretty cheaply from many companies that do that sort of thing.
I'm not sure where they came up with the "33 trillion" figure, though. There are about 17.6 trillion (4^22) possible different 22-base strands, and 70.4 trillion possible 23-base strands...
Re:120? (Score:1, Informative)
glow in the dark (Score:2, Informative)
Pretty cool, eh?
Re:...damn, you're wrong. (Score:1, Informative)
1. Mix it in with polychromase
I'll give you credit that you looked up what the initials PCR mean.
If you don't mind me asking, where can I pick up some polychromase?
2. DNA doesn't inherently glow green. You'll need to add a component such as CyberGreen to the reaction.
3. Random primers won't give you an exact replica - you'll need to sequence first.
4. Realistically, you'll never obtain enough DNA from PCR to get "a big container of paste". If you want a small pellet of DNA, you'd be much better off cloning the DNA into a vector, growing it up in come competent cells, extracting the DNA, and then digesting out the portion you want.
It's quite sad that such an ignorant and incorrect post got modded up.