New DNA Test Shows Hair Color of Crooks

New DNA Test Shows Hair Color of Crooks

A DNA test that can determine a person’s hair color was developed by Dutch scientists.

The breakthrough, announced Monday, means that a person’s hair color could soon be determined from samples of blood, sperm or saliva. Previously, only age and eye color could be predicted from such samples.

Researchers at Erasmus University Medical Center in The Netherlands said the DNA test can identify whether a person has black or red hair in 90 percent of cases and blond or brown hair in 80 percent, using 13 DNA markers from 11 genes.

The research, published in the journal "Human Genetics," could help future crime scene investigations by indicating a perpetrator's hair color to detectives.

“This type of objective information can be used to refine the description of an unknown but wanted person," said Professor Ate Kloosterman, of the Netherlands Forensic Institute.

Science seems to be getting creepier and creepier as the days go by. We can tell a persons hair color by analyzing blood, sperm or saliva, yet we can't cure the common cold.

Maybe that breakthrough will come to tomorrow... Exciting times we live in.

reply to post by Xcathdra


Very interesting, I guess through time scientists will find out more and more of what can be identified using DNA. Maybe one day the entire face can be found using just DNA.

reply to post by Xcathdra


A lot of people die from cancer than from war. Yet the government spends billions on war and nothing on curing any type of cancer. Messed up.

reply to post by iamaperson


One day at a time.. However it seems new major discoveries are popping up on an almost daily basis. This is from November 2010 which I thought was pretty cool.

Stem cell spray heals burns

reply to post by Metallicafan


Dont want to cure anything because then the economy would collapse.

The Pharma Medical Insurance complex is huge. Add the petroleum-oil thats involved in the equation...
POOF, end of the world especially as we know it.

Wow, I can see it now “We have a break-though in the case – it was a black haired, brown eyed male in his 20’s!” So close, so very close – NOT lol

Sorry, but I couldn’t help pointing out the absurdity of all this. Why don’t they spend their time and money on something that may cure / prevent one of many preventable diseases that kill millions every year!

I can't see how dna would help if a person is colouring their hair, making the test useless.
Also, what about people who's hair colour just changes? My dad was blond until he was 10, then his hair turned black. My hair was blond for most of my life, once I started to dye it a dark reddish brown, it started to stay that way. Last time I dyed it was almost a year ago, and it's dark reddish brown, with a tiny bit of grey

Would this show up in the dna, the change in hair colour? Does our dna mutate as the colour changes? Does the colour change make our dna mutate?
The article doesn't cover that, but I guess it must.

Since I and about 75% of all women don't really remember there real hair color....this test may come in handy.

reply to post by snowspirit


If your hair changed colors naturally then yes the markers would be changed as well.

Originally posted by snowspirit
Does the colour change make our dna mutate?
The article doesn't cover that, but I guess it must.

I'm sure you're joking but just in case you're not, of course DNA mutates slowly, that's how it can be used to determine age, but it doesn't mutate when you change your hair color, the mutations are more random.

Also I see no reason the same set of genes can't result in a child having blond hair which changes to brown hair after puberty, since the genes also affect many other changes associated with puberty and this doesn't mean the genes have mutated.

What troubles me about this is the percentages of probability cited, like 80% or 90%. Well if it's wrong 10% to 20% of the time, that's way too inaccurate.

Something that's 80% accurate MAY be helpful in profiling suspects, but it shouldn't be enough to convict them.

reply to post by Arbitrageur

Also I see no reason the same set of genes can't result in a child having blond hair which changes to brown hair after puberty, since the genes also affect many other changes associated with puberty and this doesn't mean the genes have mutated.

No, wasn't joking. I know that dna will mutate over a lifetime, as we age. The confusing part to me was, if in the time of less than a year, a child was to go from blond to black, naturally, or an adult from blond to dark red, naturally, not from dying it. I'm sure this must happen a lot, not just in my family.

The test also sounds as though the markers are similar in black or red hair, and similar in blond or brown. If someone goes from blond to black, or dark red.....Different genetic markers according to the article.

Researchers at Erasmus University Medical Center in The Netherlands said the DNA test can identify whether a person has black or red hair in 90 percent of cases and blond or brown hair in 80 percent, using 13 DNA markers from 11 genes.

I was thinking the markers would be changing much more slowly. Maybe not though.
The guy above your post stated that a natural change of hair colour would show dna markers changing as well.

I would assume by starting to go grey, some markers would have changed, due to aging.

Maybe that's one reason why the test has 10 - 20 % inaccuracies, since hair colour might change naturally at any time, even way after puberty. The dna could show the person as blond, and by the time a year goes by, their hair colour may have changed completely, to black or reddish, naturally.

Plus, the fact that some people, both men and women, use hair dyes, makes the whole test useless for catching criminals, I think.

Originally posted by WorldObserver
Sorry, but I couldn’t help pointing out the absurdity of all this. Why don’t they spend their time and money on something that may cure / prevent one of many preventable diseases that kill millions every year!

Research like this (I'm assuming it was a GWA Study) has already assisted in curing diseases. It was thanks to GWAS that for example allele causing "bubble boy syndrome" was identified and forward some years in the future and now this syndrome can be cured with gene therapy. You really think it's absurd to learn what gene does what?

Originally posted by snowspirit
I was thinking the markers would be changing much more slowly. Maybe not though.
The guy above your post stated that a natural change of hair colour would show dna markers changing as well.

Ok you were serious. I saw the post above mine and I'd be glad to be corrected if he can provide a source to back up that claim, but I don't know of any mechanisms by which genes can mutate in that fashion so without evidence to back up that claim I'd have to pronounce it wrong.

I'll also provide evidence of what type of gene mutation IS observed, to back up my prior claim that it's used for age determination:

Forensic applications of denaturing high-performance liquid chromatography: determination of age at death, human identification and gender determination

Determination of age at death. Various mutations accumulate in mtDNA during ageing. According to this, we are developing a new method to determine age at death based on dHPLC ability to detect mtDNA mutations. mtDNA is extracted from autopsy tissues (iliopsoas, liver, kidney, putamen and heart) of numerous individuals representing a wide age spectrum. After amplification and digestion of the entire mtDNA in 90–600 bp fragments, separation is performed by dHPLC at different temperatures. We are studying the qualitative and quantitative differential accumulation of mutations with age among the various tissues. Our methodology is presented.

Maybe that's one reason why the test has 10 - 20 % inaccuracies, since hair colour might change naturally at any time, even way after puberty. The dna could show the person as blond, and by the time a year goes by, their hair colour may have changed completely, to black or reddish, naturally.

Yes but their DNA isn't changing to cause this change, unless someone has evidence to show otherwise and I'm pretty sure they don't, though there may be somewhat of a genetic factor in the gray hair since age is one thing known to cause genes to mutate, though I doubt even the gray hair change link is associated with gene mutation.

I would assume by starting to go grey, some markers would have changed, due to aging.

According to this link, graying can be related to genes, but it's not because the genes are mutating:

www.ehow.com...

Your genes are supposed to all be identical. But when you use a photocopier to make a copy of a copy of a copy...etc the quality of the original image degrades over time, you get specks that weren't there before, and small parts of letters or periods may disappear of become fuzzy. This is analogous to the way genes mutate as we age. But the mutation doesn't take the form of an analogy of replacing some of the text with different text, and there's no known mechanism for this for the entire body or head, which is why genes don't mutate when hair color changes. So I suspect we die with more or less the genes you were born with, other than the aging mutations which are the "copy of a copy of a copy....."-type variety.

Plus, the fact that some people, both men and women, use hair dyes, makes the whole test useless for catching criminals, I think.

I agree with that!

However fewer men dye their hair than women and most criminals are men so as I said it may not be completely useless, but I do question its usefulness because it's so unreliable even for people that don't dye their hair. The dying issue just makes it worse.

science is the greatest! Respecting