DNA fingerprint discoverer Alec Jeffreys works in his University of Leicester laboratory in 1985.
Courtesy University of Leicester __1984: __ English geneticist Alec Jeffreys is performing advanced but routine lab work when he has a "Eureka!" moment and discovers DNA "fingerprinting."
Jeffreys was working in his genetics lab at Leicester University, trying to trace genetic markers through families, looking for patterns of inherited disease-causing mutations in the repeated DNA segments carried by all humans. He was using the then-new blot technique developed by Edwin Southern to separate and transfer DNA fragments.
At precisely 9:05 a.m. on Monday, Sept. 10, as he removed an X-ray film of one of the "Southern blots" from the developing tank and studied the image, he saw what looked at first like a complicated tangle of DNA strands.
Then ... CLARITY!
Every individual (except identical twins, triplets, etc.) has a unique DNA profile. Therefore, DNA can be used to identify individuals as precisely as fingerprints.
What's more, each individual carries half his or her DNA from one parent and half from the other. So, lineage as well as identity can be traced.
All that in a flash of insight!
The lack of uniformity in the DNA strands wasn't a problem in the research he had set out to do. It was a solution in an entirely new line of DNA technology.
Jeffreys knew what he was onto. Before the day was out, he had started a list of potential uses for his discovery. The initial compilation included criminal detective work, transplant biology, and establishing biological kinship in paternity and other cases.
Evidence from Jeffreys' lab helped convict a murder-rapist -- and exculpate another suspect -- in 1986. The lab was tremendously busy, handling requests from around the world, before his technique was commercialized in 1987 and came into practice in labs around the world.
Beyond the initial uses envisioned by Jeffreys that September day, anthropologists today use DNA techniques to study millions of years of human evolution and current global variation, and biologists use it to study the genetics of nonhuman species as well.
Jeffreys was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1986, and Queen Elizabeth II knighted him in 1994 for services to science and technology. When he was awarded the 2005 Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research, his co-recipient was Edwin Southern, inventor of the Southern blot technique in which Jeffreys saw -- and realized --- such great potential.
Source: University of Leicester
Sept. 20, 1952: Kitchen Blender Pegs DNA as Stuff of Life
April 25, 1953: Riddle of DNA's Architecture Finally Solved
Sept. 10, 1977: Heads Roll for the Last Time in France
April 23, 1984: AIDS Virus Disclosed, and a Premature Promise Made
