Forensic evidence can make or break a case and, in doing so, have a great impact on the lives of others. However, some techniques rely on the judgment of individual
experts and can’t be validated with statistics. In other words, these techniques are not particularly scientifically robust. We want to try and address this by creating a
toolkit of techniques which can stand up to scientific scrutiny. The three components of our forensic toolkit are FluID – a body fluid detector; a fingerprint ageing
method; and a chromate biosensor for the detection of stainless steel on bone. For FluID, the aim was to use specific binding proteins to target natural ligands that are
either unique to each fluid or highly abundant to each body fluid. These binding proteins would then be fused to fluorescent microspheres which could be applied to a
crime scene and allow for easy visual detection. A similar technique would be used for fingerprint ageing. The use of fluorescent microspheres would limit the chances
of contamination as it doesn’t contain DNA which could both contaminate the evidence but also compromise any evidence in a court of law. Our chromate
detector will use a cell based system, with GFP being expressed in the presence of chromate