FORENSIC HUMAN IDENTIFICATION: An Introduction

24 Forensic Human Identification
matching samples from the scene of crime to suspects and paternity testing is well established
and is unlikely to change fundamentally over the next ten to twenty years. Rather,
the equipment and methodology along with the interpretation of the data will be refined.
Portable testing facilities may play a limited role in the foreseeable future.
The use of DNA databases will also increase. Many countries are following the British
model (although many are governed by legislation that provides its citizens with more
rights) and some smaller countries are planning to profile the entire resident population;
an idea mooted by senior police officers in the U.K.
More types of analysis will also become more commonplace, for example, using
single nucleotide polymorphisms to infer the geographical origins of either scene of
crime material or human remains. The analysis of compromised samples is also likely
to develop further; the World Trade Center identifications acted as a primer for the
development of SNPs for typing highly degraded remains that could not be analyzed
using conventional methodologies.
Further Reading
Buckleton, J., Triggs, C.M., and Walsh, S.J., Eds., Forensic DNA Evidence Interpretation, CRC Press,
Boca Raton, FL, 2005.
Butler, J., Forensic DNA Typing: Biology and Technology behind STR Markers, Academic Press,
London, 2001.
Butler, J., Forensic DNA Typing: Biology and Technology behind STR Markers, 2nd ed., Elsevier
Academic Press, London, 2005.
Evett, I.W. and Weir, B.S., Interpreting DNA Evidence, Sinauer Associates, Inc., Sunderland, MA, 1998.
Inman, K. and Rudin, N., An introduction to Forensic DNA analysis, 2nd ed., CRC Press, Boca Raton,
FL, 2001.
Klug, W.S. and Cummings, M.R., Concepts of Genetics (International Edition), Prentice Hall
International, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2005.
Kobilinsky, L., Liotti, T.F., and Oeser-Sweat, J., DNA Forensic and Legal Applications, John Wiley &
Sons, Hoboken, NJ, 2005.
Lincoln, P.J. and Thomson, J., Eds., Forensic DNA Profiling Protocols, Humana Press Inc., Totowa,
NJ, 1998.
National Research Council, The Evaluation of Forensic DNA Evidence, National Academy Press,
Washington, DC, 1996.
References
Anderson, S., Bankier, A.T., Barrell, B.G., Debruijn, M.H.L., Coulson, A.R., Drouin, J., Eperon, I.C.,
Nierlich, D.P., Roe, B.A., Sanger, F., Schreier, P.H., Smith, A.J.H., Staden, R., and Young, I.G.,
Sequence and organization of the human mitochondrial genome, Nature 290, 457–465, 1981.
Andrews, R.M., Kubacka, I., Chinnery, P.F., Lightowlers, R.N., Turnbull, D.M., and Howell, N.,
Reanalysis and revision of the Cambridge reference sequence for human mitochondrial DNA,
Nat Genet 23, 147–147, 1999.
AnkelSimons, F. and Cummins, J.M., Misconceptions about mitochondria and mammalian
fertilization: Implications for theories on human evolution, Proc Natl Acad Sci USA
93, 13859–13863, 1996.
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