Denisovan teen. Photo by: MAAYAN HAREL
Israeli researchers have been able to reconstruct the appearance of an individual that lived 100,000 years ago through the use of DNA methylation, a process whereby methyl compounds are added to DNA molecules and the changes made are compared to other similar processes, as this article explains.
You might wonder what kind of real benefit this research might bring about. As in so many other technological breakthroughs, it's use may very well be important to law enforcement forensics. Brilliant scientists make discoveries that aren't particularly useful to ordinary citizens. Turning these discoveries into negotiable funds means that a market must be found and that market is government, government that has money and a fixation with finding responsible parties. Few private individuals have breathalyzers on their Christmas list. Lie detectors are seldom found at Target or in pawn shops.
In the case of molecular genetic profiling, like many other new forensic techniques, only the most educated and experienced researchers even know how the process works. Used in forensics this means that their results are basically irrefutable by a layman. Should these results be introduced in a court case, defense teams demand the relevant software and technological information to make their own evaluation of the evidence. Most of the time this information is not made available for proprietary reasons. It's a secret, like the recipe for Coca-Cola.
Should the DNA methylation technique prove somehow useful in fighting crime, its developers stand to become wealthy.
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