The University of Innsbruck carried out new genetic studies of 53 samples of bone, clothing and hair related to the investigation of the Iguala [Ayotzinapa] case. The results of tests of mitochondrial and nuclear DNA did not allowed obtaining any genetic profiles to determine whether they belong to any of the 43 Ayotzinapa normal school students disappeared in September 2014.
This was disclosed by a joint statement issued by members of the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (IGIE); Miguel Agustin Pro Juarez Human Rights Center, representing parents of the disappeared students; the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF), and the Attorney General's Office (PGR).
The information was released after a meeting between members of these groups and the PGR, that opened the sealed envelope that, last Tuesday, was delivered by the University of Innsbruck to the Deputy Attorney General for Human Rights of the PGR, Eber Omar Betanzos Torres.
"The document contains results concerning 53 samples of clothes with hair attached to it that were found in buses (in which the students were traveling before being disappeared and) which were sent to the IMG, the Institute of Legal Medicine of the Austrian university in September 2015; as well as nine bone and hair samples from the Cocula garbage dump and two bone samples from a bag found in the San Juan River, sent for analysis in December of the same year."The fragments had been reviewed and classified by experts from the PGR and EAAF, and subsequently submitted by the IMG to an analysis for genetic profiles.
It was pointed out that the parents of the 43 normalistas had been informed that, concerning the second installment of remains, it was not possible, so far, to obtain identification of genetic profiles in all the samples of skeletal remains using traditional nuclear STR DNA techniques, or mitochondrial DNA. The Institute of Legal Medicine at the University of Innsbruck is applied the process of massively parallel sequencing technique (MSP) to these samples, whose results will be received later.
Massive parallel sequencing is the last technical possibility to try to obtain genetic sequences of small fragments of bone which were sent to Innsbruck, because scientifically it seeks "DNA fragments 'rolled-up' in the nucleus". With this technique it was possible for the Innsbruck scientists to identify two of the 60,000 fragments of bone which PGR reported finding in the river San Juan, in the municipality of Cocula in 2014. They belonged to Alexander Mora Venancio and Jhosivani Guerrero de la Cruz, two Ayotzinapa students....Spanish original