New Version of Groundbreaking Forensic Software Launched
Summary
Noting that the latest version of STRmix™ underwent more than a year of extensive development and testing, Dr. Bright explains that demand for the software “continues to be extremely high due to the critical role it plays in helping to solve crimes and excluding individuals who have been wrongly associated as the source of crime scene evidence.” To date, STRmix™ has been used to interpret DNA evidence in more than 300,000 cases worldwide. STRmix™ works by assessing how closely multitudes of proposed profiles resemble or can explain an observed DNA mixture. These two probabilities are then presented as a likelihood ratio (LR), inferring the value of the findings and level of support for one proposition over the other. The team behind STRmix™ has also launched two related products: DBLR™, an application used with STRmix™ that allows users to undertake superfast database searches, visualize the value of their DNA mixture evidence, carry out mixture to mixture matches and kinship analyses; and FaSTR™ DNA, expert forensic software that rapidly analyzes raw DNA data generated by genetic analyzers and standard profiling kits and assigns a number of contributors (NoC) estimate.