Posted on 03/21/2014 1:08:25 PM PDT by Red Badger
Sometime in the future, technicians will go over the scene of the crime. They’ll uncover some DNA evidence and take it to the lab. And when the cops need to get a picture of the suspect, they won’t have to ask eyewitnesses to give descriptions to a sketch artist – they’ll just ask the technicians to get a mugshot from the DNA.
That, at least, is the potential of new research being published today in PLOS Genetics. In that paper, a team of scientists describe how they were able to produce crude 3D models of faces extrapolated from a person’s DNA.
“We show that facial variation with regard to sex, ancestry, and genes can be systematically studied with our methods, allowing us to lay the foundation for predictive modeling of faces,” the researchers wrote in their paper. “Such predictive modeling could be forensically useful; for example, DNA left at crime scenes could be tested and faces predicted in order to help to narrow the pool of potential suspects.”
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
To arrive at their facial reconstructions from DNA, the researchers looked at the genes that seem to correlate with facial structures, the facial structures of the people with those genes, and then asked people outside of their research group to characterize facial structures along different axes. All of these factors were then used to develop statistical models to approximate a facial structure from DNA.
well, since we can’t get a genuine birth certificate, maybe..............????
Maybe ?...................Larry Sinclair may have a sample..................
BUT, will this new technology work when cartoons commit crimes?
The article would be a utterly misleading to anyone who doesn’t understand the vast limitations inherent with this method.
There is no data that reliably predicts facial features from DNA evidence, despite what an “artist” was publicizing recently.
What CAN be predicted - gender and race predominantly, with some probability ranges coming into play for eye color, hair color, and just a couple of correlates for some populations that predict a skeletal characteristic or two - can’t give us a “face”, and instead can only give us a general police blotter description of “Female, East-Asian, likely brown eyes and dark hair”.
Even identifying height is difficult, as we haven’t identified much in the way of genes that specifically influence it, we just know it’s highly heritable.
What’s more, distinct human populations have been genetically isolated from one another for varying periods of time, often sufficient time to accumulate both different rates of relevant genes as well as develop their own novel genes that may influence a number correlations - we’d need accurate information from all relevant populations in order to even begin to accurately identify genetic correlates to facial features.
“The article would be a utterly misleading to anyone who doesn’t understand the vast limitations inherent with this method.”
By the time this technology becomes useful everyones DNA will be on file. They will have your name, address and picture.
Ping — maybe they’ll be able to put faces to ancestral fossils.
You’re just asking for an HT pic, aren’t you?...............................
Please NO
Yeah.
It’s tiresome to have to explain things like that in the face of PR department hype that gets published as news.
Thanks.
Slim pickings, eh?
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