Page 30 - Veritas - 02.03.22

DNA PHENOTYPING

Ms. Vyshnavi

Many discoveries and inventions have led to the advancement of

science and technology. Forensic was introduced during the 1830s and

has gotten bigger now. Many new technologies of forensic science have

been launched that have helped the crime scene investigations to go

smoothly by identifying the suspect sooner than expected.

DNA phenotyping is one of the latest and advanced technologies of fo-

rensic science. This is basically a technique to predict an organism’s or

a person’s phenotype that is nothing but the individual’s

characteristic features and physical appearance with the help of

genetic information, that is, DNA samples.

Now, you might question how this is helpful in the forensic field.

As we are aware, DNA defines eye colour, hair colour, skin, etc. The

genetic instructions for all these are written in DNA. Many violent

crimes in America were backlogged, and that’s when DNA

phenotyping played a major role by giving useful leads for furthering

investigation and narrowing down the suspect list.