Posted on 01/14/2015 6:10:12 PM PST by Brad from Tennessee
There were no witnesses to the gruesome murder of a South Carolina mother and her 3-year-old daughter inside a busy apartment complex four years ago. But a new technology that can create an image of someone using DNA samples left at crime scenes might bring police closer to catching the killer.
Reston, Va.-based Parabon Nanolabs, with funding from the Department of Defense, has debuted a breakthrough type of analysis called DNA phenotyping which the company says can predict a person's physical appearance from the tiniest DNA samples, like a speck of blood or strand of hair.
The DNA phenotyping service, commercially known as "Snapshot," could put a face on millions of unsolved cases, including international ones, and generate investigative leads when the trail has gone cold.
"This is particularly useful when there are no witnesses, no hits in the DNA database and nothing to go on," Dr. Ellen McRae Greytak, Parabon's director of bioinformatics, told FoxNews.com. . .
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Cool. But there go all the TV crime shows — no more profilers, no more sleuthing needed.
As soon as Abby on NCIS gets one.
I don’t think so. Lots of crimes are committed and no DNA is left behind.
That IS good news:)
What I suspect will happen is....law enforcement is taking DNA samples from more and more people. In another 25 years, the overall database should be huge. And the technology for identifying peoples relatives by DNA will become more and more refined.
In 50 years or so, I think the police will be able to feed a DNA sample into a computer, the computer will find half a dozen or so relatives, correlate the relationships, and bingo....it gives the police the name and address of the suspect.
Of course....not everything is solvable with DNA.
If you can't predict age -there certainly is a different appearance of a 20 yr old and when the same person is 70 yrs old.
It might give you the estimated appearance of the person when the blood was found at the crime scene. Who knows? -Tom
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_Phenotyping#An_Early_and_Successful_Use_Of_Forensic_DNA_Phenotyping
and while the thought of putting murderers behind bars is wonderful, the thought of the govt “fixing” some dna samples to support their narrative is very, very scary....
Looks like Trayvon is the murderer.
Have to throw the evidence away if the perp is black. That would be racial profiling.
About a year ago “Forensic Files” has an episode where the DNA indicated the perp had blonde hair, and maybe even the range of eye color (don’t remember). They put that info on the TV and in a few hours the blonde bad guy turns himself in.
The advancement in that field is amazing and seems to occur on a daily basis.
“Of course....not everything is solvable with DNA.”
Like fingerprints, if the Powers That Be can convince enough potential jurors that the technology is nearly infallible, DNA evidence can be used to get convictions. Few people understand fingerprints, fewer still DNA technologies, and even fewer understand forensic science. That means that the twelve on the jury are very unlikely to have the knowledge base to doubt a state “expert” showing colorful but unintelligible graphics.
Imagine if a bad guy stole your gloves, put on nitrile gloves under your gloves, and committed a crime, leaving your gloves, with your DNA all over the inside, behind.
You end up with a twin, or a clone, if... and that's a big if... DNA can get you past more than a sophisticated profile, tendency toward weight gain, alcoholism, baldness, hair-color...
Can it tell you how old the unidentified suspect is?
And... somehow, I can't help but wonder about all those tens of thousands of unprocessed rape kits stored away in under-funded forensic systems, in nearly every state. That's another issue, but I know the people who came up with the first fingerprint kits, the ones who sold the first ones to the FBI, more than a half century ago. That's a rich bunch, today. Fabulously well-to-do.
So why is the Pentagon paying for this, again?
Then there's the portability of DNA, something no one ever want to talk about. It's a better tool, but it doesn't create certainty.
But... that's another story...
Got some swamp land in Florida to sell.
Like a lot of things there is good and bad in this technology.
IIRC, that is where this technology was originally developed. It was used to reconstruct the face of some ancient personage. I don't remember exactly who at this moment.
They seem to be able to get DNA from a fingerprint anymore. Touch DNA sounds a little shakey to me, but just about every cop show now includes some reference to it.
Maybe some day they will require DNA profiles as part of government healthcare, uh never mind.
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