DNA fingerprints come to court

Journal Article · Fri Apr 15 04:00:00 EDT 1988 · JAMA, J. Am. Med. Assoc.; (United States)

OSTI ID:7163774

DNA fingerprinting, a new technique, which produces a visual representation of a person's genome, enables the identification of perpetrators from as little as a single hair root, providing they have left some biologic evidence-hair, skin cells, blood, or semen-at the scene of the crime. DNA fingerprinting was developed by British geneticist Alec Jeffreys, PhD, in 1985. Jeffreys, professor genetics at the University of Leicester, built upon a discovery, five years earlier, of certain hypervariable regions called minisatellites in unexpressed areas of DNA. The hypervariability was evidenced in the number of repetitions of certain sequences of base pairs. It was this aspect that revealed to Jeffreys something that had eluded other investigators. He realized that these minisatellite regions had a potential for identification far greater than that of conventional genetic markers, which are defined by restriction fragment length polymorphisms (RFLPs). RFLPs are characterized by the substitution of one base pair for another, resulting in the presence or absence of a restriction enzyme site. Thus, each offers a limited number of alleles. In contrast, minisatellite regions have an accordion-like range of length, as the number of repetitions of a given sequence varies widely from person to person.

• OSTI ID: 7163774
• Journal Information: JAMA, J. Am. Med. Assoc.; (United States), Journal Name: JAMA, J. Am. Med. Assoc.; (United States) Vol. 259:15; ISSN JAMAA
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

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59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
62 RADIOLOGY AND NUCLEAR MEDICINE
AUTORADIOGRAPHY
DIAGNOSTIC USES
DNA
DNA SEQUENCING
ELECTROPHORESIS
GENES
LABELLED COMPOUNDS
NUCLEIC ACIDS
ORGANIC COMPOUNDS
PROBABILITY
RFLPS
STRUCTURAL CHEMICAL ANALYSIS
USES