Contamination is a well-described and broadly known challenge in forensic genetics. Awareness has increased in recent years; laboratories and/or police forces have staff elimination databases, and many critical consumables are as “forensic” grade minimizing human DNA contamination. Many consumable manufacturers offer screening against personnel elimination databases relevant to their products. When a laboratory wants to screen potential contaminants, it needs to contact all manufacturers they regard as relevant. Replies to requests are mostly time consuming, sometimes due to needing to provide batch numbers or disclose original DNA profile information. 

Nevertheless, there is no guarantee that profiles are screened against all possible individuals; sometimes staff databases are incomplete due to their often voluntary nature, or companies include third party components that have not been produced according to forensic standards. The International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) has a free-to screen database that i) allows manufacturers to upload staff profiles, ii) offers DNA laboratories a mechanism to upload unsourced profiles (currently roughly 1,000 stored) like those from negative controls that don’t show any similarity to staff or other DNA profiles obtained and iii) for forensic service providers to query this database checking if a profile of interest matches an unsourced contaminant that has been previously observed and may be linked to sporadic product contamination. 

Although this database has been available for approximately 10 years, the forensic community are mostly not aware of this tool. Although not used widely, in recent years some contaminating DNA-profiles were discovered preventing police from following false investigative lead, saving both time and money. This paper aims at raising awareness within the forensic community and suggests using this tool more broadly to realise its true potential. As with any other database, success is dependent on populating it with quality assured data and routine screening.

Authors

• Ingo Bastisch (International Commission on Missing Persons, Netherlands)
• Andreas Kleiser (International Commission on Missing Persons, Netherlands)
• Adi Rizvic (International Commission on Missing Persons, Netherlands)
• Muris Pucic (International Commission on Missing Persons, Bosnia and Herzegovina)