Building a Face, and a Case, on DNA

Gianna DiMinno Forensics

   

Building a Face, and a Case, on DNA  

I read the article, “Building a Face, and a Case, on DNA” by Andrew Pollack. The article grabbed me within the first paragraph. “There were no known eyewitnesses to the murder of a young woman and her 3-year-old daughter four years ago. No security cameras caught a figure coming or going.” (Pollack, 2015). Imagine having a wife and a daughter that was murdered, but the killer who was responsible for it was still on the streets. This article is about the importance of being able to find a perp by description, DNA, and sketches of suspects. An artist’s sketches is based on eyewitnesses descriptions which would allow the face to be generated by a computer that relied solely on DNA that was found at the scene of the crime. The police had shown the sketch of the suspect to the public, hoping for someone to know further information. Investigators are known for being able to determine the physical characteristics of crime suspects from the DNA that they leave behind which provides a powerful new tool for law enforcement.

Genetic Sleuths, which are DNA investigators, are able to determine a suspect’s eye and hair color. Eventually, they will be able to determine if the suspect had freckles, baldness, curly hair, tooth shape, and as well as age by using their DNA that was left at the crime scene. Also, computers, later in time, will be able to match faces that are generated from DNA to faces in a database of mug shots which will make the process of catching a perp so much faster. It also narrows down the suspects to a limited amount. The development of these tools are a major cost. Indiana UNiversity and Purdue University Indianapolis was just given a 1.1 million dollar grant from the Department of Justice to develop these tools. Some speculating that is going around is forensic DNA phenotyping. Some scientists have questioned the accuracy of the technology, including its ability to recreate facial images.

DNA has been used to hunt down suspects or to convict people for more than two decades. This meant matching a suspect’s DNA to the DNA found at a crime scene. But DNA phenotyping is much different. It is an attempt to determine physical traits from genetic material that was left at the crime scene. Researchers are zoning in on specific physical traits with a system called HIrisPlex. It was developed at Erasmus University MC Medical Center in the Netherlands and it is 94 percent accurate in determining if a person has blue or brown eyes. It analyzes 24 genetic variants and is about 75% accurate with hair color.

I enjoyed reading this article because it grabbed my attention quickly and it was informing. I personally believe that it would be awful not knowing who the person responsible was for killing my daughter, which was talked about at the beginning of my review. This new development of technology ables us to find the person responsible quickly and efficiently. Even though some scientists are against advancing technology because it isn’t ‘accurate’, doesn’t mean that it isn’t worth giving a shot. I think one strength in this article was the attention grabber and the part when it describes some cases that was involved with this new technology and had succeeded. One weakness about this article was that towards the middle I got a little boring because after 6 cases of learning how it was used, I understood it and it got to the point where I wanted to read how it didn’t work so I could understand the positive and negatives of this development of technology. I think these ideas are going to be very useful in society and it will help us find murderers that are walking on the streets.

Pollack, Andrew. "Building a Face, and a Case, on DNA." The New York Times. The New York Times, 23 Feb. 2015. Web. 18 Nov. 2015.