The Path That Led To The Discovery Of DNA Fingerprinting

You could say the path that led to the discovery of genetic fingerprinting began for Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys when his father gave him a chemistry set and a microscope at the age of eight. Twenty-five years ago, the idea that scientists would be able to identify an individual from the smallest trace of their sweat or blood would have seemed laughable. However, thanks to Alec Jeffreys who in 1984 discovered the technique of genetic fingerprinting, determining who someone is by their DNA is was now possible.

In September of 1984, Dr. Alec Jeffreys a geneticist who worked at the University of Leicester in Great Britain was studying transmissible diseases in families. Jeffrey’s was working on a way to fix immigration and paternity issues by

DNA fingerprinting is sometimes referred to as DNA profiling but that is a misconception, they are different. Unlike the DNA fingerprinting method, DNA profiling does not use restriction enzymes to cut the DNA. Instead, it uses the polymerase chain reaction to produce many copies of specific STR sequences. To find a DNA fingerprint a scientist first has to extract the DNA from the nucleus of a cell. The cell that is used to get the DNA fingerprint can be a hair root cell, skin cell, cheek cell, and much more. Scientists can do this because your DNA is the same in all of your cells. After the scientist has gotten a good sample of DNA, they can then start the process in which they analyze it. DNA is unique in that no one in the entire world except identical twins have the same DNA. DNA is made up of four nuclear bases which are A, C, G, and T. Your DNA is determined by your parents you get half from your mother and half from your father it is hard to believe but your DNA is 99.9% the same as your parents. Now that you know a little about DNA, I am going to explain how scientists can use DNA to identify a person. DNA fingerprinting uses special proteins called restriction enzymes. Restriction enzymes slice DNA but only at a special combination of A, G, T, and C. Different restriction enzymes slice DNA at different spots each has a unique

Juveniles under the age of 18 account for 33,706 (38.3 %) of the records and 42,807 (48.6 %) were for juveniles between the ages of 18 and 20 (Fbi.gov). thankfully some of these people have been found to the suspect leaving a little DNA which matched DNA already in the system. You may be asking yourself what else is DNA fingerprinting used for besides the field of criminal justice and missing persons. Well when a crime is committed and the police get their DNA sample they run it through certain government databases. If they get no match, they assign a specific id number for this sample and it goes into the system. If a crime is committed a year later by John Smith and his DNA matches the specific id number already in the system and he does not have an alibi or any proof it wasn’t him then John Smith committed the earlier crime. The Combined DNA Index System for Missing Persons often referred to as CODIS is a database specifically designed to build up data on missing persons and unidentified human remnants cases. It was created in 2000 by the FBI the database includes information on nuclear and mitochondrial DNA obtained from unidentified remains, relatives of missing persons, and personal reference samples (Ritter). The FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services Division runs the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System or IAFIS it provides a national fingerprint and criminal history