Date of Award

Spring 5-2019

Document Type

Honors Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Science

Department

Chemistry

Advisor/Committee Chair

Erica Brunelle

Committee Member

Jan Halámek , Ph.D.

Abstract

Forensic science will be forever revolutionized if law enforcement can identify personal attributes of a person of interest solely from a fingerprint. For the past five years, the goal of the Halamek Lab has been to establish a way to identify originator attributes. Specifically, biological sex has been accomplished and the ultimate goal is to continue to accomplish this using a single analyte for each. To date, an enzymatic assay and two chemical assays have been developed for the analysis of multiple analytes. In this thesis, an additional enzymatic assay has been developed. This time, however, the assay utilizes only one amino acid. The enzymatic assay targets alanine and employs alanine transaminase (ALT), pyruvate oxidase (POx), and horseradish peroxidase (HRP). The assay proved to be capable of accurately differentiating between male and female fingerprints. The ability to target a single-analyte will transform forensic science as each originator attribute can be correlated to a different analyte, leading to the possibility of identifying multiple attributes from a single fingerprint sample. Ultimately, this would allow for a profile of a person of interest to be established without the need for time consuming lab processes.

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