Dr Laurence Devesse was announced as the winner of the 2023 Special Award in Forensic Genomics for her work making DNA identification more powerful and efficient in forensic investigation.
Dr Laurence Devesse, Visiting Lecturer in Forensic Sciences, has been awarded a 2023 Special Award in Forensic Genomics from the Rosalind Franklin Society for her publication entitled "Biogeographical Ancestry Estimation from Autosomal Short Tandem Repeats(STRs) in the Sequencing Era".
The Rosalind Franklin Society presents their Awards in Science in a range of life science fields to recognise outstanding research by women and underrepresented minorities in STEM. Dr Laurence Devesse received their award for forensic genomics alongside a $1,000 cash prize for her research on how a different method for analysing forensic data from STRs can provide more information on the biogeographical ancestry of the donor of a DNA profile.
More than 99% of DNA between different humans is identical, which means that DNA identification tools used in a forensic context rely on identifying differences between individuals using very small portions of the genome. To identify an individual from a DNA sample collected from a crime science, forensic scientists analyse STRs - repetitive sequences of DNA in the genome that are known to vary between unrelated individuals. STR profiles are traditionally used first and foremost for individual identification in forensics, and can be compared to a reference profile or searched against a database containing profiles from individuals who have been previously arrested.
If an individual can't be identified in this manner (often referred to as "no hit, no suspect" cases), then additional laboratory testing can be performed to provide investigative leads. Usually, this requires a different type of genetic analysis and going back to the sample, if still available, creating additional costs and lengthening the investigation. To help minimise these costs, Dr Laurence Devesse has developed a new method of analysis that uses STR sequences to also find ancestry information within the same data.
This data can be used to narrow down an individual's bio-geographical ancestry to one of five main global populations represented in the UK: European, West African, Northeast African, South Asian and East Asian. This means that a simple re-analysis of the data from STRs can provide additional information.
Using this re-analysis will prevent the need for multiple trips to the laboratory for multiple different analyses of a sample. Not only does this save time and reduce costs, but also means less DNA material is required to conduct both a test for individual identification and ancestry data. This is particularly important in cases where there are only small samples of blood or bodily fluids in crime scenes.
Dr Laurence Devesse said: "The first sentence of my doctoral thesis reads 'In a letter to her father, Rosalind Franklin wrote: Science, for me, gives a partial explanation for life. Insofar as it goes, it is based on fact, experience and experiment.'"
I am absolutely honoured to receive this award from the Rosalind Franklin Society for the final paper I wrote as part of my PhD research. Research in forensics is particularly rewarding for the direct benefit to society it can have, and hopefully this work will aid investigations in criminal cases where no suspect has yet been identified.
Dr Laurence Devesse
