Rapid DNA Technology

Interested Groups

Many groups are interested in this technology, including the following:

• Department of Defense (DoD) for intelligence and kinship testing
• Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for border security and immigration
• Department of Justice (DOJ) for law enforcement

The technology will most likely be used by the DoD and DHS before it can be introduced into forensic laboratories. This is primarily because the samples that will be processed by DoD and DHS are reference samples such as buccal swabs (cheek swabs) and blood samples, making the analysis fairly straightforward. Forensic samples are significantly more complex; many samples are mixtures, are degraded or are limited in size, making the analysis more challenging. Alternate methods will need to be developed and rigorously validated before the technology can be used on crime scene samples.