Fingerprints from fingerprints

Abstract

Besides ‘‘classical’’ biological materials such as blood and sperm, epithelial cells from latent fingerprints are targeted in forensic sciences. In addition to studies using latent fingerprints applied to beer glasses [1], T-shirts left on crime scenes [2] and various other objects [3], we report the detection of STR profiles from latent fingerprints deposited on ordinary sheets of paper. In contrast to the relatively high number of epithelial cells from saliva or from excessively pressured fingerprints during strangulation [4,5], the experiments with latent fingerprints are expected to generate only a very small number of epithelial cells. Moreover, cells remaining on objects touched only briefly may be nucleifree corneocytes only. Thus, the main goal of our investigation was to find out whether briefly touched objects contain nucleated cells and to increase the sensitivity of the methods to target the expected few nuclear DNA molecules from latent fingerprints on paper.