For well over a hundred years police and other law enforcement agencies have been using composite sketch art of criminals for the investigation of crimes. These sketches have been used in many major cases such as: Jack the Ripper, Lindbergh Kidnapping, and D.B. Cooper. The face presents a set of interesting qualities that create a pattern of identifiable features. With a certain attraction to the human face we have researched as long as history has been recorded.

In the last few years several companies and their scientists have created a new world of appearance prediction. They have used DNA to find roots of physical features in the DNA. If we were able to use DNA to predict facial features, law enforcement would have an easier time tracking down criminals. In realtiy the technology is still new and remains a little challenging to work all the time. Facial feature is impacted by hundreds, if not thousands, of genes; each with varying effect on facial feature.

In order to get to this point researchers had to scan thousands of people in order to get an “genetic instruction book”, or genome, to help understand how certain genes affect characteristics. Each person’s genome holds almost 3 billion chemical base pairs, these DNA spell out the persons sex to even the color of their skin. But the scientists were able to slightly change each text, one letter at a time, and predict certain physical features. For example, the research team was able to figure out someone’s eye color by looking at six letters over six different genes. Or if the team wanted to find out the suspects hair color they would focus on 22 different letters. These measures always aren’t certain though, there is the possibility of errors. The team’s predictions are more than 90 percent accurate for eye color and between 80 and 90% accurate for hair color. The team also was able to add skin color to its system and have reported results of around 85% accuracy, about the same as the eye and hair tests.

The data is limited their predictions use the genetic information of about 15,000 people in order to discern sex, ancestry, and facial characteristics. They need more data they say if we want to be able to capture more variation in facial features and characteristics and also to help increase the accuracy of the tests.  A company called Parabon believes its technology for identifying individuals is ready to hit the market. They say investigators can use the images to rule out suspects, such as eliminating suspects with red hair and blue eyes for example. Although this technology is new it could change the way we investigate crimes and even generate images of our ancestors.