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Building the Face of a Criminal From DNA

Posted by Soulskill on from the what-could-possibly-go-wrong dept.

Dave Knott writes: It sounds like science fiction, but revealing the face of a criminal based on their genes may be closer than we think. In a process known as molecular photo fitting, scientists are experimenting with using genetic markers from DNA to build up a picture of an offender's face. Dr. Peter Claes, a medical imaging specialist at the University of Leuven, has amassed a database of faces and corresponding DNA. Armed with this information, he is able to model how a face is constructed based on just 20 genes (this number will soon be expanded to 200). At the moment, police couldn't publish a molecular photo-fit like this and hope to catch a killer. But that's not how Dr. Claes sees the technique being used in a criminal investigation. "If I were to bring this result to an investigator, I wouldn't necessarily give him the image to broadcast. I would talk to him and say okay, you're looking for a woman, with a very specific chin and eyebrow structure."

1 of 59 comments (clear)

  1. Old news? by amplesand · · Score: 4, Informative

    Maybe not old as in really old, but at least since 2012/2013/2014.

    Even artists know about it.

    2012
    https://web.archive.org/web/20...
    "Researchers have moved one step closer to facial reconstruction with DNA by discovering the genes that help control the width of the human face. A recent study of almost 10,000 individuals revealed five genes associated with different facial shapes – known as PRDM16, PAX3, TP63, C5orf50, and COL17A1. Manfred Kayser and his team of the Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, used Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) of people’s heads to map facial landmarks and estimate facial distances."

    2013
    http://edition.cnn.com/2013/09... "We leave genetic traces of ourselves wherever we go -- in a strand of hair left on the subway or in saliva on the side of a glass at a cafe. So you may want to think twice the next time you spit out your gum or drop a cigarette butt in public. New York artist Heather Dewey-Hagborg might pick it up, extract the DNA and create a 3-D face that could look like you. Her project, "Stranger Visions," fashions portrait sculptures from bits of genetic material collected in public places."

    2014
    http://www.forbes.com/sites/al...
    "Sometime in the future, technicians will go over the scene of the crime. They’ll uncover some DNA evidence and take it to the lab. And when the cops need to get a picture of the suspect, they won’t have to ask eyewitnesses to give descriptions to a sketch artist – they’ll just ask the technicians to get a mugshot from the DNA. That, at least, is the potential of new research being published today in PLOS Genetics. In that paper, a team of scientists describe how they were able to produce crude 3D models of faces extrapolated from a person’s DNA."

    http://www.kuleuven.be/english...
    "Scientists are getting closer to constructing a likeness of a person's face using nothing but a DNA sample. Postdoctoral researcher Peter Claes and his colleagues describe the technique in a recent publication in PLOS Genetics. Their work opens a horizon of potential future applications in forensics, anthropology and medicine."

    Now its 2015.