https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2026/10/07/burglars-could-be-identified-from-airborne-dna QT{{” BURGLARS HAVE been steadily running out of things they can safely leave behind at a crime scene. First came footprints, then fingerprints and stray fibres. Even microscopic strands of DNA left on tools and surfaces have been used to catch the incautious. Now they have something else to worry about: fragments of genetic material in the air.
All people, criminals and non-criminals alike, shed tiny traces of themselves wherever they go. Some of this material—mainly skin cells, dandruff and saliva—ends up suspended as a personal debris cloud that can hang around after the person is gone. A new study published in Forensic Science International: Genetics, a journal, shows that volunteers who pretended to ransack houses in controlled tests could be identified from DNA pulled from the air 30 minutes after they scarpered. …
Carried out by a team led by Chiara Fantinato at Oslo University Hospital, the study is an impressive application of methods to capture and analyse what is known as environmental DNA (eDNA)—the genetic traces left by an organism in its surroundings. “}}
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