it s amazing. the company behind this new crime-fighting tool is parabon where they do something called dna phenotyping. it s essentially a genetic witness. dr. ellen greytak is parabon s director of bioinformatics. how does it work, in laymen s terms? how can you take dna and make a sketch? well, you focus on those traits that are passed down from parent to child. so if you think about, when you say, oh, you have your mother s eyes. well, you have your mother s eyes because you have your mother s dna. and we can figure out, well, this piece of dna we see in blue-eyed people, but not in brown eyed people. so all your features are connected to your dna. absolutely. parabon started off by helping the u. s. military create dna profiles from the remains of insurgent bombmakers during the iraq war. it wasn t long before cold case detectives were sending them
It’s a major tool used in law enforcement investigations: DNA, the genetic data collected at crime scenes. It can lead to a suspect or identify a victim, when it’s matched to DNA in a database. But what if there are no matches? Companies have found new ways to use DNA to paint a picture of a person.
It’s a major tool used in law enforcement investigations: DNA, the genetic data collected at crime scenes. It can lead to a suspect or identify a victim, when it’s matched to DNA in a database. But what if there are no matches? Companies have found new ways to use DNA to paint a picture of a person.
Thanks to “genetic genealogy,” solving crimes with genomic databases is becoming mainstream with some uncomfortable implications for the future of privacy.