A DNA database designed for criminal and paternity testing for the Tanzanian government was completed after it was built over the past summer.

Biological science professor Ruth Ballard and her team of nine students created two databases, one for interbreeding tribes and one for independent tribes, such as the Maasai and the Meru.

“A majority of the work was completed during the summer of 2003. I rented a small house for me and four students on the coast of the Indian Ocean in Tanzania’s capital, Dar es Salaam,” she said.

The project idea began in 2001 when she went on vacation to Tanzania with one of her graduate students to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. While visiting, the two discovered there were a lot of tribes whose frequencies in the DNA markers remained unstudied.

Ballard wanted to research the tribes and their DNA markers; However, the Tanzanian government wanted her to develop a database for the whole country.

“It was a bigger project than I first imagined, but the national database is a lot more useful for the country,” she said. “The government wanted me to leave their country a legacy.”

The researchers looked for the marker frequencies for each tribal population. Because the markers differ among different people, the markers help determine the frequency meanings for the target populations.

“We would go out on ‘saliva safaris’ in a great, big vehicle for the day. We took over 1,000 samples of many tribes,” Ballard said.

The researchers collected samples and extracted the DNA at the Muhumbili College of Health Sciences in Tanzania.

The samples were then brought back to Sac State where they were analyzed and quantified for DNA markers. The DNA fragments assigned a DNA profile to each individual.

By looking at the frequencies in profiles, researchers determined the frequencies of the markers in the population.

The next goal is building a new forensics laboratory in Tanzania so researchers can continue to update their database independently of outside help.

The database will play a significant role in the paternity issue of Tanzania. Due to increasing industrial growth, the men are moving to the cities to find jobs, leaving wives and children behind.

“These women and their children are left in abject poverty and are desperate for the ability to force the men to pay for their kids,” Ballard said. “It’s a bad situation and the women want it solved.”

Ballard and agencies that help women and children rise above poverty are trying to make the paternity test affordable and accessible for women.

The government will have to enforce the paternity law more strictly, but the goal is to make the test worthwhile for women.

Amber Kantner can be reached at [email protected].