Kit creates accurate model of face from DNA sample

This winter, a biotechnology company began offering a whole new service to police departments. Virginia-based Parabon NanoLabs’ Snapshot service allows police to send Parabon NanoLabs DNA samples taken from crime scenes. From that DNA, the company reconstructs a guess of what the person’s face looks like.

“It’s giving investigators new leads,” Ellen McRae Greytak, Parabon’s director of bioinformatics, tells Popular Science. “The idea of Snapshot is to give investigators a new way to use DNA.”

In the past few years, researchers have made big strides toward being able to reconstruct people’s appearance from their DNA. Parabon NanoLabs isn’t the first company to think to offering such services to police. Biotech companies Identitas and Illumina both offer eye and hair color guesses from DNA samples. Parabon NanoLabs seems to be unique in offering an illustrated face estimate.

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