Focused on Forensics: Irv Kornfield
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Professor of Zoology Irv Kornfield directs the Molecular Forensics Laboratory at the University of Maine, supporting law enforcement efforts by the Maine Warden Service, and fish and wildlife agencies across the country.

In the cat and mouse game between game wardens and people who skirt hunting and fishing regulations, Irv Kornfield gives law enforcement an edge.

In 1997, Kornfield created the Molecular Forensics Laboratory at UMaine to analyze DNA in animal tissues. Here, game wardens can bring samples to have them analyzed to determine identity and sex. Technicians also can tell how many individual animals are present in a sample. And by following chain-of-custody and other protocols, the lab ensures that the results can be admitted as evidence in court.

Today, the lab is one of a handful of such facilities at academic institutions around the country. It handles 10–15 cases per year for the Maine Warden Service, and has done analyses for fish and wildlife agencies in Pennsylvania, North Dakota and New Hampshire.

"The evidence can really make a difference in a case," says Kornfield, who works closely with Deborah Palman of the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife forensics laboratory in Bangor, Maine. "We've seen instances where, once the results are in, the suspect just folds and pleads guilty."

Kornfield is an evolutionary biologist who has made his mark studying fish
populations from the Gulf of Maine to Africa. With financial support from UMaine's Department of Industrial Cooperation, he continues to administer the Molecular Forensics Laboratory as a service to the state and has trained five graduate students as technicians in forensic procedures. Two have testified in court as expert witnesses.

The lab is a logical extension of Kornfield's own work in a branch of population genetics known as molecular systematics. In short, scientists in this field use clues contained in DNA to trace relationships among species and even among sub-populations of the same species. The DNA fingerprinting techniques that have become so useful in criminal investigations had their origins in such basic research.

Recognized as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Kornfield has used DNA sequencing and analysis to determine the health of commercially important fish stocks, such as herring, lobster, salmon and haddock. He advised the state during its dispute with the federal government over Atlantic salmon genetics. His work on haddock recently demonstrated that despite the collapse of that commercial fishery, genetic diversity in the overall population has not changed significantly in the past 40 years, a finding that bodes well for haddock recovery.

And then there are the cichlids, the focus of Kornfield's basic science. A group of more than 1,000 species of fish in Asia, Africa and South America, cichlids include popular aquarium fish like angelfish, as well as tilapias, rapid-growing food fish raised in aquaculture worldwide. These fish and their many cousins challenge biologists to explain rapid evolution.

For example, many of the more than 800 cichlid species of Africa's Lake Malawi, where Kornfield does his fieldwork, appear to have evolved from a single ancestral species within the past 40,000 years. If true, that rate of evolution exceeds what many biologists think is even theoretically possible.

To pursue questions about cichlid evolution, Kornfield and his graduate students have support from the National Science Foundation. They have traveled to Africa where they work with other cichlid specialists, taking underwater video of cichlids eating, defending territory and spawning in their native habitat.