STONY BROOK, NY --  The US Department of Defense has successfully used DNA to "mark" electronics components tapped for the war fighter plane and has committed funds to build a "forensically secure" supply chain from source to end-user.

Using material and processes provided by Applied DNA Sciences, the Defense Logistics Agency successfully completed a program to prove the efficacy of the technology. The program was first announced last month.

Once marked with DNA taggants, each microchip carries a "built-in" certificate of conformance to ensure authenticity and guard against counterfeiting. Used systematically, DNA marking could prevent counterfeit microchips, which might be defective and possibly dangerous, from entry at any point in the supply chain, ADNA says.

APDN has been awarded a follow-on contract of almost $1 million to fully engage one of the government's microchip supply chains. This final phase will include several original chip manufacturers, distributors, printed circuit board assemblers, system integrators and the Armed Forces, APDN said.

According to APDN, the DLA program methodology had an original chip manufacturer mark 100% of its production over two months. The chips were scanned at the chip manufacturer's facility, and the DNA-marked outer packaging was scanned at a distributor. In a blind sampling, where both marked and unmarked chips were sampled, forensic analysis confirmed the authenticity of products DNA-marked as genuine. The results showed a 100% distinction between DNA-marked and unmarked product and packaging, with no change necessary to existing production processes, APDN said.