CLPEX Chat Board

I went to a conference in Aberdeen a couple of weeks ago (FORREST 2008 - Forensic Research & Teaching) and there was an excellent keynote speech on the use of Bionanotechnology. It was by Professor David Russel, the University of East Anglia.

Basically using gold nanoparticles, antibodies and fluorescent tags, they were able to show whether the person who left the print had been using drugs, or smoking. If you are trying to figure out whether the person who left the print was a user of a specific drug, then you would attach the antibody that relates to the derivative of the drug. If the derivative it there, then it would suggest that the person has taken the drug.

The detail in the print was excellent too, clear 3rd level detail.

To make sure that the argument of I must have picked up the drug somewhere was not applicable, they used nicotine and passive smoking as an example. If someone has been in a smokey room then their prints will show positive for nicotine but if they are a non-smoker then the print will not fluoresce when treated with a fluorescent tag which keys to a nicotine by-product.

A very interesting presentation.

While an interesting concept to apply to fingerprints (I remember doing this in biochem awhile back…not for fingerprints and minus using the gold nanoparticles) I don’t know how useful it will be with today’s cut and dry choices of exclusion, inconclusive, and individualization.
If you can exclude the print or individualize the print then you really don’t need to do any other tests. That leaves you with inconclusive, which if you combine with the fact that the suspect smokes or does drugs and the latent came from a smoker or drug user still pretty much leaves you with nothing. Not to mention, I would bet that a greater majority of criminals smoke and do drugs. If we could break inconclusive into several separate categories of varying weight the addition of smoking or drug use could add a little more weight for the jury to consider.
But if their aim is to develop this as a roadside test for officers to determine if a driver is currently on drugs that could be helpful, but it would need a very high sensitivity to compete with a GC/FID.
PG

immunonanoparticles are old hat - I used them in 1982 (showing my age) and they were already well documented!!!! Typical of some chemists' is that they find things out 20 years later and then claim that they have discovered them - with the drug labelling (I heard the same talk last Autumn) you always have to consider 2ry transfer -we all handle money and all of it is contaminated with drug metabolites from drug users handling our cash - the proper experiments to rule this defence explanation out have not been done! For these guys too many toys and not enough knowledge.