Have you ever been fingerprinted for a job? If you have, Alec Jeffreys invented it. Jeffreys is a British geneticist who developed techniques for DNA profiling and RNA fingerprinting. Both techniques are used worldwide for a variety of reasons. Because of this technique, hundreds of killers have been caught, the innocent have been released from imprisonment, and justice has been served.
Jeffreys had his “eureka moment” in 1984, when he found similarities and differences between the DNA of different members of his technician’s family while looking at an x-ray image. He quickly realized that possible scope of DNA fingerprinting; he realized that there were variations in the genetic code to specifically identify individuals. DNA fingerprinting was commercialized in 1987 due to the success and the popularity of the method.
DNA fingerprinting was first used in a police forensic test to successfully identify the suspects in the Lynda Mann & Dawn Ashworth killings. The two teenagers has been raped and murdered in 1983 and 1986.