ABSTRACT
The United Kingdom was the first country in the world to implement a national DNA database, which was a corollary to its founding use of forensic DNA profiling. This chapter discusses the potential of connecting many more people than what was originally envisioned in the formation of national DNA databases. The popularity of “ancestry DNA” databases, where advertisements for their websites are publicized heavily in the media, have made possible the increasing numbers of DNA profiles on a database, given by citizens for the specific purpose of finding relatives, or their so-called “ancestry”. Forensic casework applications of epigenomic profiling should depend on discussions regarding scientific, ethical, societal, and legal challenges. A single-base sequence variation between individuals at a particular point in the genome may be referred to as a single nucleotide polymorphism, or SNP. These are different in size and purpose from the short tandem repeat traditionally used in forensic DNA profiling.
