Australia: a new technology makes the link between the DNA and the appearance of individuals

In TechnologyCredits: OSMIN4000 / ISTOCK

PAYOHAN residence, scientific editor

Not long ago, the Australian law enforcement made a source of questions.Indeed, they plan to use DNA samples from crime scenes in order to carry out a phenotyping, that is to say, characterize all the apparent characters of an individual.

The "massive parallel sequencing"

In 2017, Canadian police had reconstructed the face of the main suspect in murder that took place in 1998.The DNA which made it possible to make this robot portrait came from the crime scene.In a statement of December 5, 2021, the Australian federal police made an even more surprising announcement.The police want to use the DNA samples from the crime scenes to make forecasts on the suspects.Here is a question of phenotyping, a technique allowing to define the physical appearance of individuals, but also their biological gender as well as their ancestry.According to the publication, the police have already used a similar technique in order to identify a suspect as well as the remains of a victim.

An article published in The Conversation on December 13 gave the floor to Caitlin Curtis and James Hereward, two confirmed geneticists.According to them, the technique that the Australian police wish to apply is called "massive parallel sequencing".Concretely, it is a question of allowing machines to read at a surprising speed of the billions of DNA sequencing from police databases.

This technology using DNA will progress, but raises many doubts

This sequencing can be very useful in the context of business involving missing people.Indeed, this allows the identification of the remains of the victims or to exclude certain individuals from the list of suspects.First, the Australian police wish to use this technique to define the color of the eyes and hair.In a decade, it will eventually be possible to define body mass, but also age, size, shape of the ears or the distance between the eyes.Caitlin Curtis and James Here also believe that this kind of sequencing could exceed the appearance of individuals.Indeed, it may be possible to define a profile including their mental and physical health.

However, DNA phenotyping is not yet framed by a strict legislative framework.Also, questions concerning ethics are present, especially at the level of possible racist biases.In Australia, certain fringes of the population are more subject to suspicion, such as Aboriginal peoples.In 2020, a study published by Australian National University thus affirmed that in this country, three in four people had prejudices about this part of the population.Finally, phenotyping is for the time being a means of prediction whose share of uncertainty is still too important.