New Exciting Applications of DNA Testing

Ever since the DNA Testing was first successfully carried out in mid 1980s, more and more applications have been found for it. Many of these applications of DNA Testing have in turn revolutionized the world in various ways.

Initially, DNA Testing was carried out for forensic purposes only, mainly in resolving crimes. As it were, through the use of DNA Testing in what is popularly known as DNA fingerprinting, detectives are able to almost inextricably link suspects to crimes in ways there were not previously possible. The use of DNA Testing typically finds application in the resolution of serious crimes and has been used successfully in resolving murder, rape and other similar heinous crimes.  This application of DNA Testing in crime resolution has in turn helped to nail down suspects who would have otherwise gotten away with grave crimes, and also helped exonerate some suspects who were otherwise bound to suffer for wrongs they didn’t do or even contemplate in some cases. 

With time, other forensic applications of DNA Testing, besides crime resolution have been developed. One of these is ancestry testing. Through DNA profiles, it now possible to conduct accurate ancestry testing and to determine one’s ancestry with a degree of certainty that was not previously possible. Before the advent of DNA based ancestry testing, people had to rely on genealogical records to determine their ancestry. The problem with this approach was that not all families have always kept formal genealogical records. And even for the families that have always kept such records, they do tend to be inaccurate – at least as far as blood relations are concerned – as people have always tended to have some children out of marriages – or sow wild oats as the trend is also called in some quarters.

And besides forensic applications, DNA Testing is also increasingly finding application in paternity testing. The use of DNA in paternity testing is basically based on the premise the while the general human DNA sequence is basically identical in all people, there are some patterns in the sequence that do vary from person to person. And it has been further observed that these variable DNA sequence patterns are more similar in people who are related (by blood) than in people who are unrelated.  This makes it possible to determine paternity based on these DNA sequence patterns. And seeing how contentious an issue paternity can be, this DNA based paternity testing has been of great help to children, who otherwise risked being neglected by their fathers. It has also helped many men, who would have otherwise ended up being compelled to bring up children they didn’t sire. DNA based paternity testing has also made men more responsible in their siring adventures.

DNA Testing is also being applied in medicine to determine which genes seem to be co-relating with what diseases. At the culmination of these studies, it is expected that through DNA Testing, everyone will be able to determine their disease risk factors, and hopefully take steps to mitigate them. This is because in most hereditary diseases, the heredity only results in a predisposition to the disease, rather than resulting in the disease itself. In most cases, it takes a trigger to make this predisposition translate into the actual disease, and if steps are taken to avoid the trigger, one can be safe from the hereditary disease in question.