It is an innovation at once surprising and disturbing. We now manage to generate a robot portrait of a person from a simple DNA sample, such as a drop of blood or a hair. The color of the eyes, skin or hair, all this was already easily determined through genetic analysis. More recently, we have begun to deduce the shape of the face, chin and ears. From now on, the technique is perfected.
They are Chinese researchers from the Peking Genomics Institute who have gone much further. They showed that they could recognize features such as the shape of the lips, cheekbones, eyes or the size of the forehead. This means that it would be enough to pick up a hair on a crime scene to have a precise robot portrait of its owner.
Notable results ... but not foolproof
These researchers promise a reliability of 75%, which is notable without being foolproof. Because there is not everything in the DNA: impossible to know the morphology of the person, if it is thin or wrapped, if it has a beard, scars or pimples ... investigators on the way, but it will never be enough to send someone to jail.
On the other hand, it is a technology that will have to be well supervised. Because some already consider to use it to predict the head of a baby when it will be adult ... even to choose the face of their child.