The vertiginous development of molecular
identification techniques , which came into use in the United
Kingdom in 1985 in the civil scope and two years later in the
penitentiary field , requires of a continuous flow of information
from research centers, where these new tools are developed and
implemented, towards the judicial scopes, where such tools can
be used.
The Service of Genetic Fingerprints (Servicio de Huellas Digitales
Genéticas-SHDG) of the Faculty of Pharmacy and Biochemistry
of the University of Buenos Aires, created in 1991 and directed
by Doctor Daniel Corach, is the first institutional center in
Argentina devoted to Forensic Molecular Biology. The permanent
methodological innovation and the development of new techniques
in the international forensic community impose the need of updating
which is reflected here in the incorporation of internationally
validated systems of analysis. In this Service numerous investigations
have been made that led to the resolution of civil and criminal
lawsuits through the use of molecular techniques of identification
of individuals, human remains and spots of biological fluids.
Although biological kinship connection studies constituted the
first analyses conducted by our Service, the superiority of
cases was displaced towards deathly pale identifications, analysis
of rape cases and identifications of evidence materials, which
present as a whole a higher level of analytical difficulty.
The increase of laboratories dedicated to human identification
have determined, on the one hand, changes in the frequency of
required cases. On the other hand, public awareness of this
type of analysis determined that from 1998 a remarkable increase
of paternity studies as well as biological kinship investigations
have taken place, requested by people from the general public.
At present, having performed more than 4,000 studies of identification,
either in the civil and penal scopes, the SHDG contributes to
the forensic community with genetic data bases of reference
most commonly used by the genetic markers nowadays. This contribution
makes possible to have access to data from different regions
and provinces of our country, providing in addition potentially
applicable information in studies concerning molecular anthropology.
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