You wouldn’t expect forensic teams to waste valuable evidence. But it happens all the time, though perhaps not for much longer.
Standard DNA profiling grabs DNA from inside cells, copies it many times, and then looks for unique sequences to compare with those of a suspect. But much DNA is lost in the extraction, so tiny samples are often unusable.
Now, Adrian Linacre of Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia, and his colleagues have targeted “free” DNA – the stuff floating loose in material such as sweat and hair – in trace samples, copying it directly using a standard lab kit, bypassing the extraction step altogether.
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Read the full, original story here: Crime-scene DNA extracted from single hair
