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The did so by tracing the suspect via distant relatives’ DNA May 3rd 2018 ON APRIL 24th police in California announced the arrest of Joseph DeAngelo. Mr DeAngelo stands accused of eight counts of murder. On April 27th some intriguing details emerged of what had prompted the arrest. The starting-point was genetic material recovered from the crime scenes. Though this directly matched no DNA held in a police database, analysis of it led investigators all the way back to the 1800s, to Mr DeAngelo’s great-great-great grandparents. The trail they followed allegedly links Mr DeAngelo to crimes committed around Sacramento in the 1970s and 1980s by an unknown man who acquired the nickname of the Golden State Killer, and who murdered at least 12 people and raped more than 50. 4月24日，加州警方宣布逮捕了约瑟夫·迪安杰洛。迪安杰洛被控犯有8项谋杀罪。4月27日，关于是什么推动了这次逮捕的一些有趣的细节披露出来。案件的起点是从犯罪现场恢复的遗传物质。尽管警方数据库中没有DNA直接相匹配，但调查人员对它的分析追溯到了19世纪，也就是迪安杰罗的曾曾曾祖父母。据称，警察将迪安杰罗与犯罪联系起来的线索，是上世纪70年代和80年代在萨克拉门托附近由一个不知姓名的被称为“金州杀手”的罪犯犯下的罪行，这个杀手杀害了至少12人，强奸了50多人。 That a link to distant ancestors could lead to an arrest is testament to the power of modern genomics. Investigators first uploaded Mr DeAngelo’s genetic profile to a website called GEDmatch. This allows anyone to use his or her own genetic profile to search for family connections. GEDmatch’s database turned out to hold profiles, returned as weak matches, which looked as if they had come from distant cousins of the Golden State Killer. GEDmatch encourages uploaders to include their real name with their genomes, and the investigators were able to trace back through the matches’ parents and grandparents to find their most recent common ancestor. Then, having moved backward in time, they moved forward again, looking for as many as possible of this ancestor’s descendants. Using newspaper clippings, census records and genealogy websites, they discovered some 25 family trees stretching down from the common ancestor. On its own, the tree on which Mr DeAngelo appears has 1,000 members. 凭借与先祖的联系就可能抓到罪犯，这证明了现代基因组学的力量。调查人员首先将迪安杰罗的基因档案上传到一个名为GEDmatch的网站。这使得任何人都可以利用自己的基因图谱来寻找家庭关系。GEDmatch的数据库变成保存个人档案库，反馈微弱的匹配，判断哪一个看起来像是来自金州杀手的远亲。GEDmatch鼓励上传者在他们的基因组中提供真实姓名，调查人员可以通过追踪匹配的父母和祖父母找到他们最近的共同祖先，然后，适时的向后推断，接着再向前推断，寻找尽可能多的这位祖先的后代。利用剪报、人口普查记录和家谱网站，他们发现了大约25个从共同祖先延伸下来的家谱。就其本身而言，迪安杰罗先生所见的那棵树有1000个成员。 After that, old-fashioned sleuthing took over. From these thousands of descendants, the detectives found two who had had connections with Sacramento at the time the Golden State Killings were taking place. One was eliminated from the investigation by further DNA tests of a family member. The other, Mr DeAngelo, was arrested after police had tested the DNA on an item he had discarded. 查到这里，老式的侦查手段开始接手了。从这些数以千计的后裔中，侦探们发现了在金州谋杀案发生时曾与萨克拉门托有过联系的两个人。其中一个人在家人的DNA进一步测试中被排除在调查之外，另一个则是迪安杰罗先生，他在警察对他丢弃的物品进行DNA测试后被捕。 Serial privacy If a serial killer really has been caught using these methods, everyone will rightly applaud. But the power of forensic genomics that this case displays poses concerns for those going about their lawful business, too. It bears on the question of genetic privacy—namely, how much right people have to keep their genes to themselves—by showing that no man or woman is a genetic island. Information about one individual can reveal information about others—and not just who is related to whom. 如果一个连环杀手真的用这种方法被抓到，每个人当然应该鼓掌。但是这一案件揭示的法医基因组学的力量引发对从事合法业务的人士的担忧，即基因隐私问题——人们有多少权利保留自己的基因?——通过显示没有人是遗传的孤岛。一个人的信息可以揭示其他人的信息，这不仅仅是谁和谁有联系。 With decreasing degrees of certainty, according to the degree of consanguinity, it can divulge a relative’s susceptibilities to certain diseases, for example, or information about paternity, that the relative in question might or might not want to know, and might or might not want to become public. Who should be allowed to see such information, and who might have a right to see it, are questions that need asking. 随着确定性程度的降低，根据血缘关系的程度，它可以将亲属对某些疾病的敏感程度暴露出来，例如，或关于生父身份的信息，涉事人可能想也可能不想知道，可能希望也可能不希望公诸于众。谁应该被允许看到这样的信息，谁有权看到它，是需要问的问题。 This article appeared in the Science and technology section of the print edition under the headline "No hiding place" |
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