By the estimates you give, I make it a 33% chance.

You’re probably right – doubtful Vegas would give you better odds than that!

Hi,

I’ve been interested in that hair since 2002. Last summer I asked a very competent forensic scientist about mt-DNA and the hair is too short for today’s technology. They’d need a bigger sample. They could TRY to get DNA from it but they probably (and rightly) do not want to risk destroying the sample and getting no info from it.

This is the one instance where I think Z got his biggest break–the hair has no root bulb for nuclear DNA testing and is too short for mt-DNA testing. So it just sits there and taunts us.

I just now read his claims about anthropological research and his claim that a "full DNA profile" can now be obtained. My understanding is that a hair shaft only contains mitochondrial DNA. So I do not see how a "full DNA profile" in the sense of a full NUCLEAR DNA profile could be obtained from any hair; it is just mt-DNA so far as I know, although technology is always changing. So this bears further research on my part.

Mike

I just now read his claims about anthropological research and his claim that a "full DNA profile" can now be obtained. My understanding is that a hair shaft only contains mitochondrial DNA. So I do not see how a "full DNA profile" in the sense of a full NUCLEAR DNA profile could be obtained from any hair; it is just mt-DNA so far as I know, although technology is always changing. So this bears further research on my part.

Here’s a paper that was published this year: "Successful nuclear DNA profiling of rootless hair shafts: a novel approach."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28993934

Historically, rootless hair shaft samples submitted to a forensic laboratory for DNA analysis are reserved for mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) analysis due to the presence of highly degraded as well as insufficient amounts of nuclear DNA. Although mtDNA has been very successful in obtaining results from rootless hair, this system has its limitations, namely, it is a lineage marker that cannot differentiate between maternally related genotypes. Given the high incidence of hairs as forensic evidence, there is a need for the use of a nuclear DNA test system capable of producing reliable results for hair shaft forensic evidence. This study reports the utilization of an enhanced DNA extraction methodology for hairs, in combination with a recently developed novel, nuclear DNA typing assay, InnoTyper® 21, to improve the success rate for obtaining informative results from highly compromised, degraded, and trace forensic samples such as rootless hair shafts. The InnoTyper 21 kit is a small amplicon retrotransposon marker typing system compatible with currently used capillary electrophoresis platforms. This system contains 20 Alu element markers, ranging in size from 60 to 125 bp, making the assay highly sensitive for extremely degraded forensic samples and thus enabling recovery of nuclear DNA profiles from samples that would otherwise require mtDNA sequencing. A subset of samples was also tested with the GlobalFiler kit with less success due to the larger amplicon sizes in comparison with InnoTyper 21. Results were variable but very promising, with approximately 40% of the total number of hairs tested producing interpretable nuclear DNA profiles with InnoTyper 21. These results demonstrate the ability of the utilized methodologies to produce nuclear DNA results with high statistical power from rootless hair shafts.

Hi,

I learned that the technique being discussed is SNPS but the question is not what the new technique can do to shed light on genetic information contained in the hair. It is a question of how long the hair must be in order to have enough of it to successfully sample for the required DNA. You can have all the new ways of analyzing samples you want. But if a hair a few millimeters long is not large enough to isolate the DNA in the first place, the new analytical technique doesn’t mean a thing. I’m still looking into this issue.

Mike

Now if a DNA sample could be obtained, what would be the next step?

My guess is if it’s a sufficiently valid DNA profile that can be submitted to a database for comparison, they then try the Law Enforcement databases first. If nothing matches there, then you upload the profile to Gedmatch and search for relatives. If you find one, you enlist a genealogist to help narrow down the family tree.

Ok. I think this is just a matter of a couple of years before we finally know Zodiac’s true identity.

The DNA being examined currently is not from a hair, it’s from samples on the glue section of Zodiac envelopes. With very limited quantities to work with, they have not been able to do much over the years. Now with new technology, they can do more with less. If the existing DNA is good enough to be entered into a database, it will be as the Golden State Killer’s was entered into a public database, once the right family is identified, they’ll trace the family tree until they find the right guy. Let’s just hope the DNA yields results good enough to enter to the database

Fingers crossed, this guy, dead or alive, has been a pain in the neck of justice for way, way too long :/

DNA test results only yield conclusions if the particular sample tested matches with a known (named) identity.

50 percent chance of that.

As of 2014, the national database only had right at 13 million profiles. That’s a tiny fraction of all people (US) that have lived since say 1950.

Gedmatch.