Naming "DNA fingerprinting"
Interviewee: Alec Jeffreys. Alec Jeffreys talks about how he came up with the name. (DNAi Location: Applications > Human identification > Profiling > DNA variations and fingerprints > Naming "DNA fingerprinting")
I was giving a seminar, I think it was over in Oxford, and so I briefly mentioned some of these patterns. And there was a good, a very good friend of mine, Nick Proudfoot came up afterwards, and said well, that's interesting, a bit like fingerprints aren't they. And, that's it, let's call them DNA fingerprints. And that actually was a very wise thing to do, if we had called these, say, individually discriminating southern blot mini satellite hybridization profiles, I mean we would have killed the technology absolutely stone dead, it would never have got off the starting block. But by calling it DNA fingerprints it, the public, and we did get quite a lot of press coverage on this, the public sort of, they could twig [understand] what we were trying to say.
alec jeffreys,dna fingerprints,location applications,dnai,proudfoot,interviewee,good friend,variations,oxford,satellite,profiles
- ID: 15106
- Source: DNALC.DNAi
- Download: MPEG 4 Video Theora Video
Related Content
15102. Using tandem repeats for DNA fingerprinting, Alec Jeffreys
Alec Jeffreys (the "inventor" of DNA fingerprinting) explains repeats.
15105. First reactions to DNA fingerprinting, Alec Jeffreys
Alec Jeffreys talks about other scientists' reactions to his method.
15103. The first DNA fingerprint, Alec Jeffreys
Alec Jeffreys talks about making his first DNA fingerprint.
15582. DNA fingerprint
DNA profiling, DNA fingerprinting, gel analysis
15583. DNA fingerprint (single locus probe)
DNA profiling, DNA fingerprinting.
15587. Alec Jeffreys
An image of Alec Jeffreys.
15588. Alec Jeffreys, 1989
An image of Alec Jeffrey in 1989.
15982. The first DNA fingerprint
In 1984, Alec Jeffreys produced the first DNA fingerprint. DNA-based testing methods have evolved over the years, but they still use DNA repeats as the basis for building a DNA profile.
15591. DNA profile
An image of DNA profile.
15107. The Ghana Immigration case, Alec Jeffreys
Alec Jeffreys talks about the difficulties of the case.