Instant DNA analysis coming soon…

Amazing tech­nol­ogy that can really help out inves­ti­ga­tors. It also goes to show that DNA analy­sis really is done “by machine.” Soon to be gone are the times of “DNA experts” only to be replaced by “DNA Analyzer Operators” — very sim­i­lar to breath test oper­a­tors in DUI investigations.

How long into the future? I don’t know, but with the high costs asso­ci­ated with DNA analy­sis, both due to the reagents and test­ing sup­plies, and the expen­sive labors costs asso­ci­ated with crime labs, field DNA analy­sis is sure to be a big hit.

Original arti­cle here:

Handheld DNA test­ing machines will rev­o­lu­tionise the inves­ti­ga­tion of mur­der, rape and other seri­ous crime by pro­duc­ing results from the national data­base within an hour.

“Rapid DNA” tech­nol­ogy will enable detec­tives to test mate­r­ial at the scene of a crime or in a police sta­tion and elim­i­nate the need to send it to a laboratory.

A Whitehall brief­ing paper dis­cusses the use of portable equip­ment for DNA analy­sis in one hour rather than three or four days with the longer-term aim of reduc­ing the test­ing time to 30 minutes.

The devel­op­ment, described as a “step change in the speed of DNA analy­sis”, will be piloted by British police forces next year and save many mil­lions of pounds.

On the front line of crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion, fast-track DNA should imme­di­ately lead to quicker iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of sus­pects, giv­ing detec­tives the edge over a crim­i­nal on the run or link­ing a pris­oner to a crime scene.

More than 37,300 crimes pro­duced DNA data­base matches in 2007-08, includ­ing 363 homi­cides, 540 rapes, 163 other sex offences and almost 1,800 vio­lent incidents.

One of the fastest DNA turn­arounds to date in a big British inves­ti­ga­tion was achieved in the case of the Ipswich pros­ti­tute mur­ders in 2006. A team from the Forensic Science Service (FSS) was on duty around the clock, analysing mate­r­ial from the five bod­ies and the places where they were found.

Despite the inten­sive effort, it took three days from swabs from the body of Anneli Alderton, the third vic­tim, being sub­mit­ted to a lab­o­ra­tory to the con­fir­ma­tion of a match with Steve Wright, the killer. Wright, whose DNA pro­file was on the data­base after a con­vic­tion for theft, is serv­ing life for the murders.

The attempt to speed up the DNA-matching process that caught Wright has pro­voked strong com­pe­ti­tion between foren­sic sci­ence providers in Britain and the United States.

Two British com­pa­nies and three American ones are devel­op­ing pro­to­types. One of those is under­stood to be the FSS’s “DNA-in-a-box” prod­uct, which is a desk­top machine that would be kept in a police sta­tion cus­tody suite.

At gov­ern­ment level, the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) in London and the FBI in Washington are liais­ing over how to eval­u­ate the dif­fer­ent machines. Officials from the United States vis­ited London this month and a British team will go to Washington in November.

In addi­tion to iden­ti­fy­ing crim­i­nals, the tech­nol­ogy will also enable police to deter­mine swiftly whether the per­son they are look­ing for has left DNA mate­r­ial at other crime scenes. Rapid DNA can also speed up the elim­i­na­tion of peo­ple from inquiries and lead to much quicker iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of bod­ies recov­ered after acci­dents or ter­ror­ist attacks.

Any high-speed process will, how­ever, require the approval of the Home Office Forensic Science Regulator and the DNA Ethics Group. There are likely to be con­cerns that police offi­cers should be prop­erly trained in using the tech­niques and in avoid­ing the dan­gers of con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of evi­dence at crime scenes or busy police cus­tody areas.

“This devel­op­ment will be a huge leap for­ward for front­line polic­ing,” Chief Constable Peter Neyroud, head of the NPIA, said. “It will cut bureau­cracy, make DNA as quick as fin­ger­print analy­sis and tell police imme­di­ately whether their sus­pect is con­nected to a crime scene and if he can be con­nected to any other offences.

“This kit could mean the dif­fer­ence between life and death because of its abil­ity to match an individual’s DNA against the data­base in an hour rather than three or four days, as is cur­rently the case.”

Gary Pugh, direc­tor of foren­sic ser­vices at Scotland Yard, said that he envis­aged the new tech­nique being deployed ini­tially in cus­tody suites where pris­on­ers’ swabs could be quickly checked against the database.

“Routinely, because of processes such as trans­port­ing sam­ples to the lab, it takes a few days to get a result,” Mr Pugh said. “If you really push it in an urgent case, you can get a six-hour turn­around time. But this new tech­nol­ogy will bring poten­tially great ben­e­fits for inves­ti­gat­ing crime.”