If you have other questions not answered here, please send us an email. If it’s a good one, we’ll post it here.

Question: What is Double Helix Tracking Technologies and what does it do?

Answer: Double Helix Tracking Technologies (DHTT for short) is a technology company developing DNA-based services for the timber industry – specifically to verify the origin of timber products. We work with scientists world-wide to integrate the most appropriate scientific know-how into a service of value to the industry, at a cost it can afford.

Question: Why do we need to track timber products back to source in the first place?

Answer: Unless we know where our timber products come from, we will never know if they were harvested from legitimate production forest, a plantation or a protected forest area like a National Park. Without this information, none of us can make an educated choice about the wood products we buy. Without this information, illegal-logging can continue unabated.

Question: Who do you work with?

Answer: We work with a range of organisations involved in the timber sector, from forest certification companies, forest concessions, sawmills, timber traders through to distributors and retailers. We also collaborate with scientific institutions, non-governmental organisations and government bodies.

Question: Why use DNA for timber?

Answer: Why not? DNA analysis has been used for human and animal forensics for over 30 years. And compared to other methods of timber tracking, DNA is the only 100% tamper-proof and reliable system because it uses the genetic code inherent in the tree itself.

Question: So why hasn’t DNA been used before?

Answer: DNA is harder to extract and analyse from wood than it is from humans. That’s partly because wood is effectively dead tissue and the DNA has degraded, and partly because the natural chemicals in wood make it harder to analyse the DNA effectively. Our efforts are focused on overcoming these challenges.

Question: Is tree DNA like human DNA?

Answer: Basically, yes. In fact the tree DNA strand or ‘genome’ is 60-100 times longer than the human genome. But the structure is essentially the same.