Is it possible to tell the ethnic origin of a person from their DNA profile?
An ethnic group or ethnicity is a population whose members identify with each other, either on the basis of a presumed common genealogy or ancestry, or by recognition by others as a distinct group, or by common cultural, linguistic, religious or territorial traits. The forensic DNA tests we utilize provide only weak information on ethnic and geographic origin. Certain alleles may be more common in one ethnic group than another which may give some indication of a person’s race, however there is significant overlap between ethnic groups so it is not yet possible to say that a DNA profile must have come from a member of a particular ethnic group. Ongoing research is being conducted to identify single nucleotide polymorphisms (called SNPs ). This research has shown variations in a single DNA base-pair that indicate major population differences. Such information would provide the sort of ethnic and geographic information that might be useful in identifying suspects. This information would n
