Forensic Testing – Casework Programs – ETHNITest

ETHNITest is a program developed by the population geneticists at the DNA Reference Laboratory. The program is designed to offer a cost efficient means of establishing general ethnicity and some ancestral information from a standard 13 – 15 marker DNA profile. Our population geneticists have compiled databases worldwide to provide the most comprehensive resources for comparison.

Police departments are interested in ETHNITest. Often, a forensic case goes unsolved because no leads are available and the DNA profile, although entered into CODIS, does not turn up any hits. Some evidence samples may be of low quantity and are not available for further testing. Entering the DNA profile into ETHNITest can provide investigators with ethnic information to allow them to further narrow their search.

Why use ETHNITest and not SNP testing or more deeply rooted ancestral tests for obtaining ethnic information from your samples? Currently, those processes are expensive, take time, and require sample. We can confidentially use the DNA profile already generated to obtain an ethnicity probability, without touching the sample, retesting, or requiring any other information than the 13 locus profile. This is helpful when the only evidence sample was exhausted years ago and there are no other leads.

For information on our ETHNITest services, call (210)-692-3800.