MERIDIAN, Idaho (KMVT/KSVT) DNA testing has been in the news a lot lately, with decades old cases being solved thanks to advances in how they test it.

A scientist does DNA testing in this photo provided by the ISP Forensic Lab (KMVT/Rachel Fabbi).

KMVT went out to the Idaho State Police Forensic Services Lab in Meridian to talk with lab director Matthew Gamette to get an in-depth look at how far testing has come in the last 30 years.

“DNA technology has changed quite a bit over time as scientific discoveries have been made. Most of the developments in DNA science happened in the 1990s or so,” Gamette explained.

The men and women at the lab are highly qualified and work on cases from all over the Gem State.

“Anybody that’s working for us in the DNA unit will have, right now they have a minimum of a bachelor’s degree in a physical science, so biology, chemistry, biochemistry, something of that nature. So they are scientists. And a lot of them have advanced degrees, master’s degrees and things of that nature,” Gamette stated.

Gamette explained how the testing process works.

“We’ll actually extract the DNA into a liquid, we will do what we call amplify it, first quantitate it, then we’ll amplify it, and then we’ll look at what that is on some cameras that are very sensitive with florescent dyes that we adhere to the DNA,” Gamette said.

But that’s just the start of it.

“Then we have a complex DNA analysis on computers, they’re looking at data, and then what happens after that point is we generate a report, have a second scientist look at that report and all of the data associated with it, and we’ll issue the report to the investigating law enforcement agency,” Gamette explained.

While the equipment hasn’t changed much, the capabilities are improving.

“The sensitivity of the equipment is always increasing, the type of technologies that we’re using now are mostly the same we’ve had for probably 20 years,” he said. “However; there are some new technologies coming online that we are looking at using, and trying to implement them properly. But we will see some significant increases in technology in the next few years.”