Cops, sleuths and private eyes may have a new trick up their sleeves that could help them finger more criminals than ever before, thanks to the work of a team of scientists at the University of Albany.
By examining a series of fingerprints using a new technique, the researchers found that they were able to determine the gender of the owner, with a 99 percent accuracy rate. Although their study involved a relatively small sample size, the team claims that their findings – which appeared recently in the journal Analytical Chemistry – could change the way that fingerprints are analyzed, suggesting that more useful information can be gleaned from their biochemical content than their physical shape and structure.
For instance, it is well established that the sweat of men and women contain different combinations and amounts of certain amino acids, the building blocks that make up the proteins of our body. The researchers therefore developed a technique to examine the concentrations of different amino acids in the residual sweat left behind with each print. Since each of these amino acids is known to occur in much higher concentrations in female than male sweat, the study authors were able to use this to determine the gender of each print owner.
In doing so, they have broken with the tradition of focusing on the pictorial content of fingerprints. Previous attempts to determine gender have generally looked at the concentration of ridges in certain regions of the print. That said, this is not the first time that researchers have taken a biochemical approach to fingerprint analysis. For example, a similar study which appeared in the journal Analyst in 2012 revealed how the peptides – or short chains of amino acids – can give away the gender of a print, although the authors were only able to achieve a success rate of 85 percent.
While more work must be done to refine the process, coauthor and forensic scientist Jan Halamek believes the approach could soon be adapted to reveal a more complete profile of a person from their fingerprint. “We want to create a very simple kit which can determine on the spot whether the person was young or old, male or female, and their ethnicity,” he told the New York Times.
If developed, such a kit could have a range of applications, including making crooks much easier to identify – unless they happen to suffer from adermatoglyphia, a rare condition of people born without fingerprints… or they’ve been through the Men in Black initiation process.
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