Bigfoot by a HAIR...

With the airing of the recent documentary specials “Bigfoot Files” much was made about hair and extracting mtDNA from hair shafts. Dr. Sykes went to great lengths to assure everyone that he could decontaminate the hair and thus extract a “pure” DNA sample. Here is Dr. Sykes statement: The fact is hair is very resilient. You can clean any suggestion of contamination from the surface of the hair without damaging the DNA that lies within. This is something we have only known in the past couple of years.

Mitochondrial DNA can be extracted from the hair shafts. This is possible with “normal” hair from a human or animal, but during Dr. Ketchum’s DNA study she discovered a quality about Bigfoot hair that was unique to the species. Regardless of how hard she tried using Human Primers or Universal Mammalian Primers she could not get any mtDNA to amplify when using a Bigfoot hair shaft only.  Either the shafts contain no mtDNA or the shafts contain enzymes that inhibit the primers from attaching to the mtDNA sequences which would result in amplification. 

Dr. Ketchum's comment about the hair:

 I found I repeatedly couldn't extract DNA (something that never happens with large robust hairs like these), I couldn't understand it.  I sent non-rooted hairs from the same 8 samples I had been attempting to extract  to the North LA Criminalistics Lab to be robotically extracted.  His system is designed to yield super-clean DNA from very low yield sources we have in forensic testing.  He didn't get any DNA either.  So this enigma was repeated and neither of us with combined 60 plus years of extraction experience could explain it.  We thought it was inhibitors but no, there was just not any DNA present in our extractions.  Our control human samples extracted perfectly.  He gave me the extractions that he made on those eight samples (some of which were Paulides submissions) and I put them on my spectrophotometer to double check them and confirmed his robotic samples contained no DNA at all.

Dr. Ketchum had discovered this unique property and consequently a repeatable identifier for Bigfoot hair.  If the hair would have been contaminated by human mtDNA then that DNA would have amplified with the Human Primers and if the hair was from any know animal the mtDNA would have amplified by the Universal Mammalian Primers. A fact the Journal Nature referees wanted stripped from the DNA Study.

With this knowledge Dr. Ketchum began to spread the word to those of us who were collecting samples to please only send in hairs with a visible follicle or skin tag attached.  It was a waste of time and money to send in hair samples with no skin tags because mtDNA could not be extracted from the shaft alone.

I know for fact Dr. Sykes and those working with him had access to the DNA Study. The Bigfoot hair morphology was discussed in great detail including photographs and supplements.  The fact that only a few hairs were tested out of 100’s that were sent in to Dr. Sykes is a puzzling aspect of the “Bigfoot Files” TV Specials.

 I have a theory that Dr. Sykes was aware of this unique property that Dr. Ketcum had discovered about the Bigfoot hairs. He knew if he tested true Bigfoot hairs he would not get any mtDNA. He had already professed himself to be the expert and able to extract “pristine DNA” from only a hair shaft, so he has a dilemma on his hands.  If he processes known Bigfoot hair and gets no mtDNA then he has to admit one of two things:  1 - He is incompetent and unable to extract mtDNA from possibly dozens of “clean and pristine” hair samples or 2 -That the hair must be from a Bigfoot or an unknown hominin after the mtDNA failed to amplify from dozens of hair samples. This by default confirms Dr. Ketchum’s DNA Study finding’s and validates her study.

Since both these scenarios is unpalatable, Dr. Sykes opted to just test a handful of hairs he knew where known animal. Surely you do not believe that Dr. Sykes was so inept that he did not have the hairs pre-screened by a forensic hair expert. It is costly to run DNA testing on these hairs, at least $1,500 if not more per sample. Surely the hair expert Dr. Sykes used was not so incompetent that he gave Dr. Sykes known animal hairs of Bear, Dog, Raccoon, and Wolf?  If so, then Dr. Sykes should be suing this hair expert to recoup the thousands of dollars spent on wasted DNA testing. This would explain why only “seven of the best samples were selected for testing”.  In my opinion who ever screened the hairs for Dr. Sykes made sure to exclude any known Bigfoot hairs. This way Dr. Sykes would only be testing known animal hair and avoid having to explain the lack of mtDNA amplification. 

This is a “kill two birds with one stone” scenario. Dr. Sykes discredited the Bigfoot researchers in the United States and avoided confirming Dr. Ketchum’s DNA Study. Mission accomplished Dr. Sykes, mission accomplished.