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Alec Jeffreys
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===Genetic fingerprinting=== Jeffreys says he had a "[[eureka moment]]" in his lab in Leicester after looking at the [[X-ray]] film image of a [[DNA]] experiment on 10 September 1984, which unexpectedly showed both similarities and differences between the DNA of different members of his technician's family.<ref name="BBC"/><ref name = "welcome 2004"/> Within about half an hour, he continued, he realised the possible scope of DNA fingerprinting, which uses variations in the [[genetic information]] to identify individuals. The method has become important in [[forensic science]] to assist police detective work, and it has also proved useful in resolving paternity and immigration disputes.<ref name="DIDiscs AJ"/> The method can also be applied to non-human species, for example in wildlife [[population genetics]] studies.<ref name="DNA Fingerprinting Zoology 2014" /> Before his methods were commercialised in 1987, his laboratory was the only centre in the world that carried out DNA fingerprinting, and was consequently very busy, receiving inquiries from all over the globe.<ref name="DIDiscs AJ"/><ref name="welcome 2004">{{cite web|url=http://genome.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_wtd020877.html |title=Discovering DNA fingerprinting: Sir Alec Jeffreys describes its development |publisher=[[Wellcome Trust]] |date=4 February 2004 |first=Giles |last=Newton |access-date=23 December 2007 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100305135415/http://genome.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_wtd020877.html |archive-date=5 March 2010 |url-status=dead}}</ref> Jeffreys's DNA method was first put to use in 1985 when he was asked to help in a disputed immigration case to confirm the identity of a British boy whose family was originally from [[Ghana]].<ref name="DIDiscs AJ"/> The case was resolved when the DNA results proved that the boy was closely related to the other members of the family, and Jeffreys saw the relief in the mother's face when she heard the results.<ref name="DIDiscs AJ"/> DNA fingerprinting was first used in a police forensic test to identify the killer of two teenagers, Lynda Mann and Dawn Ashworth, who had been raped and murdered in [[Narborough, Leicestershire]], in 1983 and 1986 respectively. [[Colin Pitchfork]] was identified and convicted of their murders after samples taken from him matched [[semen]] samples taken from the two dead girls.<ref name="DIDiscs AJ"/> This turned out to be a specifically important identification; British authorities believe that without it an innocent man would have inevitably been convicted. Not only did Jeffreys' work, in this case, prove who the real killer was, but it exonerated Richard Buckland, initially a prime suspect, who likely would have spent his life in prison otherwise. The story behind the investigations is told in [[Joseph Wambaugh]]'s 1989 best-selling book ''The Blooding: The True Story of the Narborough Village Murders'' and the murders and subsequent solving of the crimes was featured in Episode 4 of the first season of the 1996 American TV series ''[[Forensic Files|Medical Detectives]]'' in which Jeffreys himself also appears. A further television mini-series based on these events was released in 2015, ''[[Code of a Killer]]''. In 1992, Jeffreys's methods were used to confirm the identity for German prosecutors of the body of [[Josef Mengele]], who had died in 1979, by comparing DNA obtained from a [[femur]] bone of his exhumed skeleton,<ref name = "nature med 2005">{{Cite journal | last1 = Hodgson | first1 = J. | title = Ten years of biotech gaffes|doi = 10.1038/nbt0306-270|journal = Nature Biotechnology|volume = 24|issue = 3|pages = 270β273|year = 2006|pmid = 16525384| s2cid = 560311 }}</ref> with DNA from his mother and son, in a similar way to paternity testing.<ref name="DIDiscs AJ"/>
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