Nowadays it’s hard to identify people who have committed
murders or have stolen something very valuable. In any case detectives try to
look for fingerprints of the person who committed the crime and try to match with
some suspects. However, how many suspects are you’re going to go through to
find the real one, or what if you can’t identify the suspect with just their
fingerprints? Well geneticists have come up with a brilliant idea to make an
almost realistic “photofit” wanted poster just by using the DNA of the suspect.
Researchers have developed a method for determining how
genes influence facial shape. Today, it is already possible to make some type
of reference about the appearance of a crime suspect from their DNA alone. This
includes their racial ancestry and shades of hair color.
Not if, but when, claim researchers who have developed a
method for determining how our genes influence facial shape. One day, the
technique may even allow us to gaze into the faces of extinct human-like
species that interbred with our own ancestors. In 2012 Manfred Kayser of Erasmus
University Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, with is team had
identified five different genetic variants with detectable effects on facial
shape. Geneticist Mark Shriver of
Pennsylvania State University and Peter Claes of the Catholic University of
Leuven used a stereoscopic camera to capture some 3D images of 600 people in Europe.
He studied these picture and looked out for genes that affected the relative
positions of the facial areas.
More and more researchers are studying how their can improve
this way of identifying facial shape, look, and making a more realistic picture
of a person with just using their DNA. It’s amazing where researchers have gotten
with advanced research. Hopefully they continue to improve their research and
find ways to make this idea come true.
