In the effort, Australian police say they are using advanced DNA sequencing technology to predict the appearance of potential suspects.
Technology has come as a dynamic force in law enforcement agencies around the world and is exploring ways to make the most of it to make the world a safer place.
The technology, also known as Massive Parallel Sequencing, uses DNA left by criminals at the scene. By using it, law enforcement agencies will be able to predict gender, biogeographical origin, eye color, etc. of the suspect even if there are no identical records in the police database.
Experts see it as a game-changing technology in the hands of experimental teams but also worry that it could be used for racial analysis, personal privacy, and genetics.
Human DNA is 99.9 percent identical and the difference in it is only 0.1 percent which makes each of us genetically different from the other.
During the investigation of crime hotspots, intelligence experts relied on the 0.1 percent difference to track down or identify suspects.
Professor Adrian Linacre, chair of DNA technology at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia, told the Guardian, “This new approach tells you something about the person … the external features.” Technology can process “tens of millions of bits of DNA at a time,” he added.
But this technology is still evolving. Linacre said investigating the crime was a daunting task and that most of the material found there was a DNA mixture of two or three people.
In those cases, he added, traditional DNA profile techniques work well but the use of new MPS technology can lead to vague results. “We will continue to develop the best software programs to eliminate large amounts of sequential data.”
Drs. Paul Roffey, a leading scientist at Australian federal police forensics, said the organization aims to increase forecasts to include age, body weight index, and height.
