NewMove over DNA: scientists can identify you through proteins in your hair

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Glendon Parker, a biochemist with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's Forensic Science Center, examines a 250-year-old archaeological hair sample that has been analysed for human identification using protein markers from the hair. Researchers from LLNL and a Utah startup company have developed the first-ever biological identification method that exploits the information encoded in proteins of human hair. Photo: LLNL/TNS

Published: 7:39am, 10 Sep 2016

A strand of hair at a crime scene, or clinging to human remains unearthed by archaeologists, could hold new promise as a means to identify its unique owner and unravel mysteries sealed by the passage of time.

In research published this week, scientists from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories reported they are devising a test of human hair that could fingerprint its owner in cases in which DNA evidence is fragmented, damaged or nowhere to be found. Like DNA sequencing, the test they have devised not only could identify an individual but trace his or her ancestry.

The researchers’ discovery, reported Wednesday in the journal PLoS One, addresses one of forensic scientists’ most pressing needs: a reliable alternative to DNA identification.

DNA is actually quite fragile and notoriously vulnerable to degradation with time and exposure to the environment. It’s tricky to coax a full sequence from an old biological sample or one that’s been buried, frozen or baked in the sun.

Newly crowned Miss World Japan Priyanka Yoshikawa adjusts her hair, which scientists can now use to identify individuals. Photo: AP

While a shaft of hair often is presented as evidence in an old-fashioned whodunit, it does not actually contain nuclear DNA, the chemical blueprint an individual inherits from both parents. It does contain mitochondrial DNA, but because that is passed down matrilineally, it has limits as a means of identification.