My most recent article from MEMS Investor Journal:
The television series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation became one of the most watched shows of the past decade by updating the police procedural genre with cutting edge forensic science. Although it has tried to keep its forensic science technically accurate, the demands of sixty minute TV often led to displays of scientific analysis and acumen well beyond what even the best crime labs could do. Practicing forensic scientists refer to the “CSI effect” when juries expect far more from forensic evidence than what is possible or practical.
This is particularly the case with DNA analysis. The current method of DNA “fingerprinting” – measuring naturally occurring differences in the length of certain sections of the genome called short tandem repeats (STRs) – became well established in the 1990s as a tool to solve crimes, convict the guilty, and exonerate the innocent. However, DNA fingerprinting’s cost and sometimes cumbersome procedures limit its more widespread use as an investigative tool.
DNA fingerprinting adapted reagents, techniques, and instrumentation used in molecular biology, including thermal cyclers and both gel and capillary electrophoresis systems. However, the cost of a working molecular biology lab is not trivial, especially in the U.S. where law enforcement is primarily a state, county, or city function – many jurisdictions simply cannot afford it. It does not help that new high throughput genomic analysis instrumentation is even more costly and diverges even further from the requirements of the forensic science community.
In an ideal world, a crime scene investigation would look at a modest number of samples, but do so quickly – preferably in a few hours – and without requiring a specialized lab or training. Microfluidics would seem to be an ideal solution. The steps in DNA fingerprinting – extracting DNA from a sample, followed by amplification, labeling, and electrophoresis – are all amenable to microfluidic miniaturization; integrating and multiplexing up to, say, 16 samples are well within the capabilities of existing microfluidic manufacturing. And microfluidic integration would eliminate (or at least reduce) the need for specially constructed lab facilities to prevent sample cross-contamination.
The U.S. Department of Justice has been funding research in microfluidics and DNA fingerprinting since 1997, as has the United Kingdom’s Forensic Science Service (FSS). Companies active in this area today include IntergenX (with ties to UC Berkeley), Microlab Diagnostics (spun out from the University of Virginia, and recently acquired by Zygem), NetBio (a spinout from MIT), and a collaboration between the FSS and the University of Arizona.
Progress in developing a commercial system has been slow. This is in part due to the engineering challenges of building integrated microfluidic systems, as well as the desire to move toward smaller, less costly optics in the instrument. Also, DNA crime samples can be extremely challenging, including samples with extremely small amounts of DNA, mixtures of blood from perpetrators and victims, and untold numbers, types, and concentrations of crime scene contaminants.
Given the power of DNA fingerprinting as not only a way to solve crimes but also as a nearly foolproof biometric, increased research funding is coming into the area. The U.S. Departments of Defense, Justice, and Homeland Security have jointly funded a program called ANDE (Accelerated Nuclear DNA Equipment) to provide automated rapid human DNA profiling capabilities for field biometrics and forensics applications, with the intent of having a system ready for testing in 2011. Also, the Department of Homeland Security has a separate initiative to develop a low cost, desktop system to verify identity or kinship – DNA is unique among biometric technologies in its ability to verify familial relationships.
From an investor standpoint, this is good news. DNA identification systems that could be deployed for both biometrics and forensics would increase the addressable market beyond just the “tough-to-crack” law enforcement segment. In the longer term, there is an overlap between the sample preparation requirements for DNA fingerprinting and for molecular diagnostics in clinical settings such as hospitals. The companies that crack the DNA forensics market will have a very lucrative future indeed, beyond just the chance at a product placement in a future CSI: The Movie.
