Why do Timelines for DNA Results Vary so Much?

5.49K views

I’m a Forensic Files and nerd and have noticed that DNA does not seem to have a standard turnaround time? Going from the late 90s to today, there seems to be a very arbitrary amount of days/months/sometimes years that must go by before the DNA is processed? Not to identify the bad guy, but just to get the profile isolated.

I understand available resources, and the urgency of the case play a role, but there doesn’t seem to be anywhere near standard amounts of time established to get information back? Why is the time variance so widely distributed?

In: Technology

2 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Ive never heard of it being years. The physical amount of time it takes to process the sample in a lab is about a day. If it takes longer then that, it has to do with paperwork, back-ups in the lab, analyzing results, importance, legality, etc.

Anonymous 0 Comments

It doesn’t, part of that is unless someone wants to take their charge to trial there’s no need to spend thousands processing the DNA, part of it is just serious backlogs in processing.