| Title | Chemists Use Mass Spectrometry Tools to Determine Age of Fingerprints | |
| Date | Sunday February 23 2020, @03:24AM | |
| Author | janrinok | |
| Topic | ||
| from the whorl-new-world dept. | ||
Chemists use mass spectrometry tools to determine age of fingerprints:
Fingerprints are telling us more and more about the people that left them behind.
Sure, we all know the unique whorls, loops and arches in a print can identify a person. But now researchers are studying how the natural and environmental compounds within them can also offer clues about a person's lifestyle, gender and ethnicity.
But even as researchers discover new information in fingerprints, they still hadn't found a way to determine a basic fact about a print: How old is it? That's information that could potentially tie a suspect to a crime scene. And that's information chemists at Iowa State University are beginning to provide.
Paige Hinners was using a computer algorithm to objectively analyze the degradation and spread of fingerprint ridges over time—potentially a way to determine the age of a fingerprint—when she noticed something else in her data. The unsaturated fatty oils in a fingerprint were disappearing from her measurements.
"If we're losing them, where are they going?" asked Hinners, who in December completed her doctorate in analytical chemistry at Iowa State and now works as a senior chemist for Ames-based Renewable Energy Group Inc. She worked on the fingerprint project while she was a graduate student in the research group of Young-Jin Lee, a professor of chemistry at Iowa State. Madison Thomas, a former Iowa State undergraduate student, also assisted with the project.
Eventually the research group found answers: As the unsaturated fats—triacylglycerols, to be exact—disappeared from the data, other compounds resulting from reactions with ozone—or ozonolysis—started showing up.
That led to numerous trials and steps to confirm that ozone was causing the degradation of the unsaturated fats in fingerprints. And that led to the conclusion that, with more study, this could turn into a useful tool to determine the age of a fingerprint.
The Iowa State chemists' discovery was recently published online by the research journal Analytical Chemistry and is featured on a supplementary cover of the current print edition.
The paper describes how the chemists used a tool called matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry imaging. It's technology that uses a laser to analyze compounds left on a surface then records the mass and electrical charge of each component within a sample, such as the various oils in a fingerprint. The imaging tool allowed the chemists to track the degradation of unsaturated oils due to reaction with ozone in the air.
Residues in fingerprints hold clues to their age
More information: Paige Hinners et al, Determining Fingerprint Age with Mass Spectrometry Imaging via Ozonolysis of Triacylglycerols, Analytical Chemistry (2020). DOI: 10.1021/acs.analchem.9b04765
Journal information: Analytical Chemistry
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