This sixth episode of the 2018 Research and Development (R&D) Season of the National Institute of Justice's (NIJ's) Just Science podcast series presents an interview with Dr. Michael Edge of of the University of California Davis, who discusses his research with record linkage of CODIS profiles with SNP genotypes.
The interview focuses on the possibilities of linkages between CODIS and SNPs databases for identity and familial matching, dispelling preconceptions associated with them. The interview covers the complications that arise when forensic scientists attempt to match a CODIS DNA profile with a familial profile from a SNP database, given that the marker patterns used for CODIS focus on individual identities and the SNP databases focus on ancestral and familial identities. The research project of Dr. Edge is focusing on the possibilities of linkages between CODIS and SNP databases that will improve the ability of forensic analysts to make reliable matches between individuals in the CODIS database with individuals with particular ancestries in familial databases. This involves determining whether familial ancestries are distinctive to all individuals within a particular family, as well as the degree to which individuals within the same family can be identified as belonging to that family rather than another family that may have a similar ancestry.