DNA technology to witness dramatic changes in 5 years: Expert

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Hyderabad: DNA technology is set to witness dramatic changes in the next five years resulting in reduced time needed for conducting tests with increased accuracy, said former Director of Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) Lalji Singh here on Monday. Singh who undertook DNA tests in several sensational cases across the country said, "The newer technologies for conducting DNA tests would drastically reduce the time needed for conducting tests with increased accuracy."
Singh was delivering a key-note address at the inauguration of a three-day national-level workshop on 'DNA-The Decisive Evidence' at the Andhra Pradesh Police Academy (APPA) here. DNA Chip/Microarray technology has a potential for development of DNA chips for establishing identity of an individual at the entire genome level, he said.

"If and when such a DNA chip for establishing identity is developed, it would become very simple and very fast to establish match of the biological sample found at the scene of crime and the DNA of the suspect with that of the DNA chip," he said adding this technology will be the ultimate technique based on the comparison at the total genome level. Singh said DNA is very stable and can be isolated from the biological remains of thousands of year-old and even from fossils, that are 2.5 million year-old. "We have ourselves isolated DNA from remains found in Himalayas which are 1,700 years old," he added. The former Director of CCMB said there was a necessity to identify biological material in the absence of any fingerprint at the scene of crime and the dream of forensic scientists was fulfilled in 1985 by the discovery of DNA fingerprinting by Prof Alec Jeffreys of University of Leicester, UK. Singh pointed out that DNA pattern of an individual from every tissue of the body is the same and it does not change with age. He said countries like United States collect blood samples of their soldiers which are preserved and utilised to identify the missing and injured soldiers during wars. "Even blood samples of every new-born child in US is stored to establish the identity of missing child," he added. APPA Director C N Gopi Natha Reddy said the DNA bill which is prepared by the Hyderabad-based institutes CDFD and NALSAR, is in the process of being enacted by Parliament this year.
"This is going to be a boon for those convicts/undertrials, who were wrongly convicted/accused for lack of proper evidence and spending lives in jails," he said.

Bureau Report





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