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What is the best way of retrieving a DNA sample (i.e., blood, saliva, hair, semen). Does it all offer the same information?

April 26, 2017best blood dna hair retrieving saliva sample Semen

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What is the best way of retrieving a DNA sample (i.e., blood, saliva, hair, semen). Does it all offer the same information?

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Hair poses particular challenges. The strands themselves will not generate a profile through application of standard DNA testing, which requires the presence of the hair follicle. New advances in mitochondrial DNA testing have produced accepted tests results in recent cases. This testing is prohibitively expensive and is, at this time, only being done by the FBI laboratory. Otherwise, equally valid DNA profiles may be isolated from each of the other bodily fluids mentioned (for semen to generate a DNA profile, the sample must contain sperm). Each can offer the same information with the same degree of precision. Clearly, taking a saliva sample from a suspect is the least physically intrusive.