DNAprint Genomics (DNAG)

[Blue Juggernaut]

Police hail swift DNA technology
Sunday, December 12, 2004

By Jonathan D. Silver, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/04347/425686.stm


In the mid-1980s, Paul McComb was a Pittsburgh police detective investigating a sexual assault on a woman.

After some footwork, McComb and his partner made an arrest. McComb knew he had the right person. But to make absolutely sure, authorities ran the suspect's blood through a relatively new-fangled DNA test that had recently debuted in England.

"We got a positive match," recalled McComb, who today is a sergeant running the department's crime unit. "Getting a confession sometimes isn't enough. With the DNA evidence, it was a solid, solid case, and he's still in jail."

Since that time, DNA technology -- and its use in crime fighting -- has undergone an amazing transformation. Samples of a human being's genetic material that were once considered too small, too old or too contaminated to be used in a case are now considered viable. Large DNA databases of criminals have been compiled and are used regularly by law enforcement. And DNA is being mined for ever more detailed information in a shorter amount of time.

"I never thought we would be able to get samples from a baseball hat, or the swabbing of eyeglasses, 15 years ago when I started because we needed a quarter-sized drop of blood in the early 1990s. Now I don't even need to see a stain," said Beth Ann Marne, supervisor of the DNA laboratory for the Pennsylvania State Police.

Experts who track developments in DNA technology and law enforcement envision policing only getting better and faster because of scientific advances.

Robotics and automation are trimming the time it takes to process DNA samples. A local software company, Cybergenetics in Oakland, has done the same for analyzing and interpreting the results. A group in Florida is able to deduce ethnicity and eye color from DNA samples, which could help police narrow down a list of suspects.

The world of tomorrow might even contain portable devices to scan DNA right at crime scenes. Someday, if the arguments of civil libertarians can be outmaneuvered, there might be a national DNA database formed from samples taken at birth.


Britain at the forefront
Twenty years ago, British scientist Sir Alec Jeffreys made a discovery that changed the course of DNA technology. Jeffreys proved that people have unique genetic fingerprints. His technique was quickly applied to police work. DNA fingerprinting ruled out a suspect in a double rape and homicide in England and then helped convict the culprit.

Today, England still leads the way in using DNA for fighting crime through the country's Forensic Science Service. The agency takes credit for establishing the world's first national criminal intelligence DNA database.

Mark Perlin, chief executive officer of Cybergenetics, is familiar with how British forensic work operates. His company's software for analyzing and interpreting the results of testing DNA from property crime scenes is used by the Forensic Science Service.

Perlin said the British emphasize DNA technology for investigation rather than trial, as is the focus in the United States. Instead of using DNA primarily in the courtroom, the British use it as a matter of course during investigations of such offenses as burglaries.

In Britain, rapists and murderers have been convicted because of matches of crime-scene evidence with DNA taken after the suspects had been charged with other minor crimes, including disorderly conduct and shoplifting.

McComb said his 12-member crime unit did not collect DNA from every crime scene. It would not be feasible, especially considering the backlog in cases at Allegheny County's crime lab.

"Will we spend three hours there with a light source looking for saliva, urine, hairs etc.? No. It's not practical," McComb said.

Officers in Britain can take a mouth swab for DNA testing from anyone detained and arrested. The DNA is sent for processing and comparison with known offenders and crime-scene evidence. Then reports on the matching profiles are sent back to the police.

In this country, police need search warrants to obtain DNA samples from people. In order to obtain a warrant, they need probable cause that someone has committed a crime. Judges must sign off on the warrant.

All the crime-scene DNA in the world won't help police if there isn't an offender to whom it can be matched.


Expanding DNA databases
Last month, Gov. Ed Rendell signed into law a bill that requires all convicted felons to submit DNA samples to state police, thereby expanding Pennsylvania's database.

All 50 states maintain DNA databases, and the FBI oversees a national database. States have different requirements for who must submit DNA samples, but University of Wisconsin-Madison law professor Michael E. Smith said no matter where you look, the trend is for including more information, not less.

However, Smith said, DNA databases are skewing toward including more black men than white men, leading to concerns about racial disparity.

"The databases are building and they're getting bigger all the time and more comprehensive and more racially distorted," Smith said. "If we want to meet the maximum value for crime control and public safety purposes, we really want to have a near-universal database. We do want to be able to identify people if they leave DNA at a crime scene."

In the United States, California has what the American Civil Liberties Union calls the "most draconian DNA database system in the country" after the recent approval by voters of Proposition 69, which will require in 2009 that people arrested for felonies, but not convicted, submit a DNA sample. The ACLU has filed a class-action suit saying the law is unconstitutional.


A 'fuzzy' photo
In the absence of matching crime-scene DNA with a known felon, a Florida-based company is doing the next best thing. DNAPrint Genomics is working to create a picture for investigators of what a suspect might look like.

It's hardly a perfect science. But the company believes it can provide police with a "fuzzy photograph" of a culprit based on a determination of likely ethnicity.

From DNA, the company can tell what percentage of a person's genetic makeup is likely to be black, white, Asian and American Indian. With those percentages, DNAPrint Genomics can consult a book of "mug shots" submitted by volunteers who have had their own DNA screened.

Depending on what the DNA at a crime scene reveals about a suspect's genetic makeup, the company can provide a range of pictures of other people with similar genetic profiles, giving investigators a rough idea of the person's general appearance.

"It's our feeling that really what we're doing is placing an eyewitness at the crime scene just by looking at the DNA," said Zach Gaskin, the company's technical coordinator of forensics. "If a guy is 95 percent Sub-Saharan African, you know you're not looking for someone who is Caucasian, East Asian or Hispanic."

In the future, DNAPrint Genomics might be able to tell far more about a suspect than ethnicity and eye color. Figuring out how genes dictate, say, the shape of someone's nose might help immensely to creating what Gaskin called a "genetic sketch."

"In theory, yes, I think it's possible that we'll be able to produce a general sketch. And what we're doing now is producing a fuzzy photo, a driver's license photo with the picture smudged and no information on it."