A new paper involving Environment Institute members Janette Edson, Alan Cooper and Jeremy Austin, as well as Elizabeth Brooks (Forensic and Data Centres, The Australian Federal Police), Carolyn McLaren (University of Canberra), James Robertson (University of Canberra), Dennis McNevin (University of Canberra) has recently been published in the Journal Forensic Science International:Genetics.

The paper titled, ‘A quantitative assessment of a reliable screening technique for the STR analysis of telogen hair roots’ looks at human telogen hairs, which are commonly recovered as trace evidence but currently have limited use for forensic DNA analysis. The paper presents methods that can be incorporated into routine trace and DNA analysis, providing an efficient and cost effective method to screen telogen hairs and predict STR (short tandem repeats) profiling success prior to destructive DNA analysis. The results of this study indicate telogen hairs may provide a reliable source of nuclear DNA for use in routine casework.

Read the paper to find out more.