Dundee iGEM 2015

Future Works

Life After iGEM

Overview

Life after iGEM is an interesting area for many projects. Some flourish into great things, some form a basis for PhD research, and some many never find the funding to go further.

The future for the forensic toolkit would be heavily based around further research and then creating a product with potential to manufacture. Robust laboratory research would be needed to prove and test the aspects of the toolkit. After this the research can be used by the respective government to aid forensic investigation or it can fall into the business world to create an enterprise.

Synthetic biology is an area that is always expanding, and with this follows huge commercial potential. In the UK the Home Office estimates that the forensic market is valued at £70-100 million (2013-14) (1). The worldwide market for forensic science is even more extensive.

FluID:

This part of our protect has great potential after iGEM. If the FluID detector was succesful it would be the first spray that could find multiple bodily fluids at a crime scene, using just one type of product, instead of several. The ideas and methods behind the FluID spray can also potentially be used for other applications, for example in determining how clean hospitals are, thus creating a highly marketable product.

Fingerprint Ageing:

As the 'holy grail' of forensics, if our fingerprint ageing device was successful it would make a significant impact in the forensics field. This would give legal systems around the world the ability to put a time frame on a crime scene, this would make a great asset to any forensic response officer. Being new would make this unique, but it would need to be robustly tested before use.

Chromate Biosensor:

Being able to detect traces of stainless steel on kerfmarks on bone is currently limited to visual techniques. Procedures for retrieving trace evidence are expensive and hence employed hesitantly. Our chromate sensor lays the foundation for more affordable and easier trace evidence retrieval. However, in our labwork in this area has not proven very successful, so the first step will have to be to create a functional chromate sensor.

Testing

Testing the constituents of our forensic toolkit will be an essential part before launching any of the product. Tests for toxicity and other interactions with the environment are required. This is not only to assess the potential health hazards it poses, but also to test applicability of the products in domestic and outside crime scenes (2).

A project like this may be heavily influenced by public opinion. The 'CSI-effect', which can lead to wrong expectations of forensic techniques, will also affect the forensic toolkit. For future development of the forensic toolkit, education and public engagement should be an essential complement.

No forensic technique is perfect or 100% accurate and specific. In order to develop a marketable product, all the aforementioned points have to be considered. Perhaps most importantly, though, the product needs to be user-friendly and produce reliable results. Overall, we believe that our forensic toolkit has great potential, and that it is a first step into the direction of putting science back into forensic science.

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References