New fingerprint methods developed

The team aim to extract DNA from fingerprints on clothes

Researchers in Dundee are working with police to develop dependable ways of taking fingerprints from clothes.

Traditional methods for obtaining prints from substances like glass or metals do not work on material.

The scientists at Abertay University are trying to refine a new method and are studying if the prints will survive after the clothes are washed.

They are also trying to determine whether DNA can be extracted from fingerprints on the cloth.

'Microscopic amounts'

Professor of Environmental Sciences, David Bremner, said: "The usual way of doing fingerprints is, for example, a powder on the fingerprint which sits in the ridges and shows it up. Or you have different kinds of chemical reagents that you then look at with different types of light.

"This method [for clothes] is called vapour metal deposition. The cloth with the fingerprint on it is put into a sort of vacuum unit and metal vapour is deposited on the whole of the surface of the cloth.

"Where the fingerprint is shows up differently from the background and so consequently you can see the fingerprint."

At the moment it is not always possible to tell who the print has come from using the method, but it can be useful in situations where fingerprints could show that someone was attacked rather than committed suicide or fell.

The Abertay team, led by teaching assistant Joanna Fraser, are working on ways of refining the prints.

They are also going a stage further as Professor Bremner explained.

"I don't think anybody else is doing this," he said.

"What we're looking at in the future is finding out where the fingerprints are on a garment, so you would do this vapour metal deposition. Then once we've treated it, see if we can get sufficient DNA from below the metal deposition.

"It would be microscopic amounts but it would be capable of being multiplied up."