Creating an identity card with DNA
This article is about sexual violence. Have you or has someone close to you experienced a form of sexual violence? Go to UM's Sexual Safety Programme for support.
One in ten women in Europe above the age of 15 has experienced or will experience sexual violence in her life. However, these cases do not often lead to biological evidence that can be used to identify the perpetrator. Associate professor Athina Vidaki (CARIM, GROW) wants to change this with her research in the field of forensic (epi)genomics. By finetuning genetic techniques and analysing single cells, she aims to make DNA evidence more powerful to help solve more of these cases.
Athina is originally from Greece, but has lived in the Netherlands for ten years. Since early on, she has been fascinated by DNA and using it to identify people. “In forensic (epi)genomics, we provide DNA evidence by comparing biological material we find at a crime scene with material from the victim or suspect. This process is crucial, but not always successful. Therefore, we let DNA act as a biological witness and create a kind of identity card based on it. By looking at ten or twenty letters in your genome, for example, we can roughly tell your age: are you in your early thirties or late fifties? We can also tell if somebody smokes tobacco or stopped doing so. This can be useful for the police, because they can narrow down their suspect pool and start their investigation by targeting a specific group of people.”
Identifying perpetrators
Athina is currently coordinating CapCell, a large research project funded by the European Commission’s Horizon Europe programme, which runs for four years. “The whole DNA profiling process is currently based on standard genetic techniques used by forensic labs. We are now looking at a new approach on how to analyse single cells collected from forensic evidence. This way, our methods will become way more sensitive. We need to improve the current success rate of detecting someone’s DNA and make sure more DNA evidence is analysed and interpreted correctly. At the end of the project, we aim to have a toolkit that which every forensic lab can use to handle sexual assault cases. The end goal is to increase the chances of identification of the perpetrator, which unfortunately doesn’t happen as often as it should.”
In some European countries half of sexual violence cases never lead to biological evidence that we can use or interpret. We want to improve this.
Needle in a a haystack
There are two main reasons why perpetrators are not always identified. “One is lack of evidence. Nine out of ten victims of sexual assault are women. In case of a rape, we therefore collect vaginal swabs in which we hope to find sperm cells from the perpetrator. However, these samples often contain hundreds of thousands of vaginal cells from the victim and maybe just a few dozens of sperm cells from the perpetrator, which means we are looking for a needle in a haystack. And the longer it takes for the victim to report the crime, the smaller the chance these sperm cells survive. We then profile the ‘mixed’ DNA and if we are lucky, we get the female profile and a small part of the male profile. Sometimes we get nothing. The second problem is interpreting these DNA profiles. Often the woman has a husband or boyfriend, or in extreme cases multiple perpetrators are involved. Therefore, the sample contains biological material from multiple males and you end up with such a mixed profile that is difficult, if not impossible, to separate and identify the ones involved.”
“Our research aims to help with both problems. We want to make the evidence more prominent, traceable, sensitive, standardised and user-friendly, with the help of AI, for example. In some European countries half of the sexual violence cases never lead to biological evidence that we can use or interpret. That’s tens of thousands cases every year. We want to improve this.”
Giving answers
“I feel sexual violence is an important topic and we need to support both the victims and their families. For me, it’s quite unacceptable not being able to give answers and serve justice. I think that’s what we are scientists for: finding the truth that society needs in complex situations. We need to solve this problem to protect the future victims, our children, our friends and ourselves from perpetrators who will commit the crime again if they are not caught. My personal motivation for this topic comes from the technological innovation in our project, which has always fascinated me and lets us revisit this complex scientific puzzle, but also from the societal need as a woman myself.”
Want to learn more about Athina’s research? Read more about CapCell.
Text and photo: Joëlle van Wissen
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