What is the biology behind DNA Forensic testing?
The molecular biology of DNA forensic analysis was first developed by Dr. Alec Jeffreys (now Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys) for a sexual assault case in England. The terms ‘DNA Fingerprinting’ and ‘DNA profiling’ now all refer to the same technique. Dr. Jeffreys discovered that the repeated DNA structures he was studying had the same core sequences: the variation he observed was unique to each individual. When this approach was applied on a slightly larger scale, each individual would have a unique pattern, distinguishable from all others. This forms the basis of current DNA forensic testing.
