Portrait in DNA: Can forensic analysis yield police-style sketches of suspects?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlZ5bF3opQ4

Key Ideas:

• The analysis marks the first full sequencing of an ancient human genome and offers an example of how much detectives can discover just from a suspect’s genetic code.
• The researchers resolved a debate about the origins of Greenland’s paleo-Eskimos by showing he had a pattern of DNA variations most common in Siberian population groups.
• Having more to go on than ancestry is the goal of some programs that fund research into alternative genetic markers for forensic use.
• An important feature in profiling has hereditary roots but also depends on environmental factors, such as nutrition during childhood.
• Skin-deep is as far as a DNA sketch should go, according to some bioethicists.

Reflection:

I think this article was pretty interesting to read. Using DNA to help solve forensic cases is really intense. Science truly has come such a long way and it's now used for things that used to be impossible. This article implies that DNA will continue to be useful in forensic analysis and will have an even more important role in the future. This article makes me wonder what will happen in the future. Because scientific technology has developed so much in a span of 10 years, we can only imagine how much more will be developed in another 10 years. This course helped me to understand this topic because we studied genetics and DNA.

MLA: Soares, Christine. "Portrait in DNA: Can Forensic Analysis Yield Police-style Sketches of Suspects?: Scientific American." Scientific American May 2010. Science News, Articles and Information | Scientific American. Web. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=portrait-in-dna.