Police Are Using Cat Hair To Catch Criminals

Until recently, a lack of human DNA at a crime scene would mean that the perpetrator could get away with whatever dastardly deed they’ve committed.

But after researchers shifted their focus to cat DNA, they’ve made a scientific breakthrough that could help close out a number of cold cases.

Since a quarter of UK households have cats as pets, and cat hair has been known to cling to clothing, the presence of their DNA can place somebody at a crime scene years after the fact.

Before the research was established and extrapolated, cat DNA seemed like a dead end in the field of forensics because a hair sample would often be dried up and rendered useless by the time it was discovered.

But mitochondrial DNA, which is passed down through a female lineage, became the point of focus. And it allowed scientists to find the genetic code that paints a clearer picture of a specific cat’s DNA.

This research was not without obstacles, however, as a cat’s mitochondrial DNA is often broken or incomplete.

What’s more, cats have very similar DNA and share a very small number of ancestors, meaning that a small sample could potentially belong to thousands of different cats.

By multiplying these mitochondrial fragments by billions, scientists have been able to reconstruct the full mitochondrial DNA of a specific cat in a process that’s not unlike the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests that are used for Covid-19.

In other words, scientists have found a needle in a hairball.

Though cats all share very similar DNA, this new approach, which is 10 times more accurate than older methods, has allowed scientists to be able to narrow the scope, and even use their data to identify cats years after they’ve passed away.

This breakthrough in sequencing cat DNA can be a total game changer in regard to solving cold cases where no human DNA is present. If investigators have a sample of cat hair, they could in theory trace the hair to a specific cat, which will lead them to the cat’s owner.

Co-author of the study, Professor Mark Jobling, is excited about his team’s findings because until recently cat DNA wasn’t a reliable source of evidence until this new method was established.

At the end of the day, human DNA is the most reliable to place somebody at the scene of a crime. But now that cat DNA can be pinpointed with such a high degree of accuracy, there’s no telling how many cold cases will generate new leads, especially when you consider how many people own cats.

And if you’re a dog owner who has succumbed to a life of crime, you may want to consider cleaning up your act because Jobling has reason to believe that the same research that was conducted on cat DNA could also eventually be applied to the DNA of man’s best friend.