Real-Picado, A.; Díaz, L.; Gomes, C. Relevance of Genetic Identification and Kinship Analysis in Human and Natural Catastrophes—A Review. Genealogy2023, 7, 44.
Real-Picado, A.; Díaz, L.; Gomes, C. Relevance of Genetic Identification and Kinship Analysis in Human and Natural Catastrophes—A Review. Genealogy 2023, 7, 44.
Real-Picado, A.; Díaz, L.; Gomes, C. Relevance of Genetic Identification and Kinship Analysis in Human and Natural Catastrophes—A Review. Genealogy2023, 7, 44.
Real-Picado, A.; Díaz, L.; Gomes, C. Relevance of Genetic Identification and Kinship Analysis in Human and Natural Catastrophes—A Review. Genealogy 2023, 7, 44.
Abstract
Different types of disasters, whether natural or human character, lead to the significant loss of human lives. In the latter case, the quick action of identification of corpses and human remains is mandatory. There are a variety of protocols to identify victims, however, genetics is one of the tools that allow an exact identification of the victim. However, several factors may interfere with this identification, from the biological samples’ degradation not allowing the analysis of nuclear information, to failure to dispose of biological samples from family members. Access to certain family members could be a determinant of the proper choice of genetic markers that allow the identification of the victim, or his/her inclusion in a given genetic maternal or paternal lineage. With the new advances in the genetic field, it is expected to allow soon the identification of victims from disasters only with his/her biological postmortem samples, being possible to draw a robot portrait and its most likely physical characteristics. In all cases, genetics is the only modern tool with universal character and can be used in essentially all biological samples, giving and identification of more or less accurate statistical character, depending on whether nuclear or lineage markers are used.
Keywords
Catastrophes; Genetic identification; Kinship analysis; DNA degradation
Subject
Medicine and Pharmacology, Other
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
