Automated Processing of Sexual Assault Cases Using Selective Degradation

The goal of this research is to produce a method for processing sexual assault evidence that will be faster, easier, and more cost effective than the current method of differential extraction. The approach uses a method called selective degradation to improve the separation of the male and female fractions of sexual assault evidence. Addition of a degradative agent is inherently easier and much more effective than physically diluting and washing away the remaining victim DNA from the sperm pellet, and the selective degradation method requires only a single step. As compared with other methods, selective degradation is simple, will result in faster processing of sexual assault evidence, and results in higher purity sperm DNA with less contaminating DNA from the victim in the sperm fraction.

ca/ncf