To Sketch a Thief: Genes Draw Likeness of Suspects

Wall Street Journal ^ | March 27, 2009 | Gautam Naik

[reaganaut1]

The old-fashioned police sketch is getting a makeover.

Researchers are identifying genes that give rise to a person's physical traits, such as facial structure, skin color or even whether they are right- or left-handed. That could allow police to build a picture of what a criminal looks like not just from sometimes-fuzzy eyewitness accounts, but by analyzing DNA found at a crime scene.

Forensic experts are increasingly relying on DNA as "a genetic eyewitness," says Jack Ballantyne, associate director for research at the National Center for Forensic Science at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, who is studying whether a DNA sample can reveal a person's age. "We'd like to say if the DNA found on a bomb fragment comes from the young man who carried the bomb or from the wizened old mastermind who built it."

The push to predict physical features from genetic material is known as DNA forensic phenotyping, and it's already helped crack some difficult investigations. In 2004, police caught a Louisiana serial killer who eyewitnesses had suggested was white, but whose crime-scene DNA suggested -- correctly -- that he was black. Britain's forensic service uses a similar "ethnic inference" test to trace murderers and rapists.

...

But the technique is still in early stages of development, and no one has developed a gene-based police sketch yet.

...

DNA-based racial profiling "has to be used carefully," especially in a diverse country like America, says Bert-Jaap Koops of Tilburg University in the Netherlands, who has studied the regulatory picture in different countries. "Some people could make connections between race, crime and genetic disposition" and thereby encourage stigmatization.

[reaganaut1]

I think it's OK to use "DNA forensic phenotyping" to help police identify suspects for further investigation, but certainly someone should not be indicted (much less convicted) solely based on such evidence.

[Red_Devil 232]

Have they done this with Obambi yet?

[neverdem]

I think it's OK to use "DNA forensic phenotyping" to help police identify suspects for further investigation, but certainly someone should not be indicted (much less convicted) solely based on such evidence.

IIRC, they don't check a the entire DNA sample, just segments of it. Then they express the odds of the culprit not having the the same results of the sample in terms like the chance of being hit by lightning. IMHO, it sounds better than fingerprints as long as the chain of custody has integrity. I never saw or heard any proof that everyone has unique fingerprints.

[grey_whiskers]

IMHO, it sounds better than fingerprints as long as the chain of custody has integrity. I never saw or heard any proof that everyone has unique fingerprints.

Not everyone has unique DNA.

Cheers!