Chemists Use Mass Spectrometry Tools to Determine Age of Fingerprints

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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.

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