Your Hair and Your ID

 

We’ve known for years that DNA can be obtained from hair and this can be used for identification. If part of the follicle, or bulb, is present, then nuclear DNA can be retrieved and a complete DNA profile can be created. If only the hair shaft is available, then mitochondrial DNA is available and this can help narrow the identity of an individual by showing that the person belongs to a specific maternal line. Not nearly as good as nuclear DNA but this does focus the suspect field to a single maternal line.

But what if the hair shaft could be even more discriminatory? What if it could ID a specific individual and not just someone in the maternal line? Most hair found at crime scenes has been shed naturally and therefore has no follicular material, which might be present if the hair had been yanked free. This means that typically only mitochondrial DNA is available to the crime lab. 

But new studies have found an ultra-sensitive method for determining proteins within the hair shaft itself and it turns out that the types and amounts of the proteins present might be highly specific from individual to individual. This technique obviously is not ready for prime time yet, but it’s something to keep an eye on.

Science Article: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/11/scientists-can-now-identify-someone-single-strand-hair

 

Give Books For Christmas

Make your Christmas shopping painless, and avoid the malls, by giving books. Always great gifts. Visit your local independent bookstore or shop online.

Might a suggest my two latest:

SKIN IN THE GAME, Cain/Harper #1

Raised as siblings by an itinerant “gypsy” family, knife expert Bobby Cain, trained by the US military in the lethal art of covert eliminations, and Harper McCoy, nurtured by the US Navy and the CIA to run black ops and wage psychological warfare, are now civilians. Of a sort. Employing the skills learned from the “family” and their training, they now fix the unfixable. Case in point: Retired General William Kessler hires the duo to track down his missing granddaughter, a Vanderbilt University co-ed. Their search leads them to a small, bucolic, lake-side town in central Tennessee and into a world of prostitution, human trafficking, and serial murder. The question then becomes: Will their considerable skills be enough for Cain and Harper to save the young woman, and themselves, from a sociopath with “home field” advantage, a hunter’s skills, and his own deeply disturbing agenda?

 

SUNSHINE STATE. Jake Longly #3

In SUNSHINE STATE, Jake Longly and girlfriend Nicole Jamison are confronted with the most bizarre case yet. Serial killer Billy Wayne Baker now denies that two of the seven murders he confessed to doing are actually his work. An anonymous benefactor, who believes Billy Wayne’s denials, hires Longly Investigations to prove Billy Wayne right. Yet, Billy Wayne confessed. Not only did he have the motive, means, and opportunity, but also DNA connects him to each murder.

Jake, Nicole, Ray, and Pancake travel to the small Gulf coast town of Pine Key, where three of the murders occurred. The local police, the FBI, and the state prosecutor and crime lab each did their jobs, uncovered overwhelming evidence of Billy Wayne’s guilt, and even extracted a full confession. Is Billy Wayne simply trying to tweak the system, garnering another fifteen minutes of fame? Is it all a game to him? But, if he’s being truthful, is there a killer out there getting away with murder? Who? Why? Most importantly, how?

Nothing is as it seems in the Sunshine State.

See all my books at: http://www.dplylemd.com/books.html