Scientists at the University of Leicester, where genetic 'fingerprinting' was invented by Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys, say they are developing techniques which may one day allow police to work out someone’s surname from DNA alone.
Research by Turi King has shown that, unsurprisingly, men with the same British surname are highly likely to be genetically linked even in today's multicultural world. The results of her research have implications in the fields of forensics, genealogy, epidemiology and the history of surnames.
On Wednesday 8th October Dr King will present the key findings of her Ph.D. research in which she recruited over two and a half thousand men bearing over 500 different surnames to take part in the study. Carried out in Professor Mark Jobling’s lab, Dr Turi King’s research involved exploring this potential link between surname and Y chromosome type.