Cybergenetics
is pleased to announce the publication of an important forensic DNA
advance in the journal Law, Probability and Risk. The paper
"Match likelihood ratio for uncertain genotypes" enables scientists to
extract far more identification information from the same DNA evidence.
The prominent forensic statistician Dr. John Buckleton, Principal
Scientist at ESR in New Zealand, considers this paper to be "a
particularly elegant piece of work."
Every genetically distinct person has a unique genotype. However,
evidence that is damaged, mixed or low-level may produce ambiguous data.
Such zombie™ DNA is currently analyzed by crime labs in ways
that may discard considerable identification information. This
information loss occurs because current DNA likelihood ratio (LR) match
statistics focus on special cases where the genotype is assumed to have
a definite value.
In the match likelihood ratio (MLR) paper, the authors embrace genotype
uncertainty, and show how to tame it using probability. Lead author Dr.
Mark Perlin, CEO of Cybergenetics,
says that "Just as quantum mechanics extended the explanatory power of
physics by treating particles as probability distributions, so too does
MLR conserve DNA identification power by representing genotypes using
probability." The MLR permits a simple match of these uncertain
genotypes in intuitive ways that can be explained visually.