Forensic DNA phenotyping: prediction of human externally visible traits in missing person identification

After attending this poster presentation, attendees will better understand the emerging role assumed by externally visible characteristics (EVCs) prediction from forensic samples, or from body parts, in police investigations towards finding unknown individuals, particularly when conventional DNA profiling fails to provide informative leads. The poster presentation will impact the forensic science community by prove the usefulness of forensic DNA phenotyping (FDP), highlighted by missing person identification casework in which our laboratory successfully tested the method proposed. Predicting externally visible characteristics (EVCs) using informative DNA molecular markers has started to become a rapidly developing area in forensic DNA phenotyping (FDP). The most relevant forensic cases for DNA-based EVCs prediction would be those in which the evidence DNA is useful for describing a person’s physical appearance from skeletal remains. Here we evaluate the HIrisPlex DNA test multiplex for the simultaneous prediction of eye, hair, and skin colour in 20 italian skeletal remains deal with 20 different missing person identification caseworks in which identification was performed using the conventional STR-based method. In order to test the reliability and the accuracy of the DNA-basedEVCs prediction, victim pictures or portraits were available as reference document.