• Question: why do people use hair to get DNA results?

    Asked by to Lilly, Deepak on 19 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Lilian Hunt

      Lilian Hunt answered on 19 Mar 2014:

      At the base of your hair is the root and it is this bit that contains the most DNA of the person. So we can use hair to extract this DNA and test it. This can be testing for paternity (checking who the father of a child is) or other medical tests. However we’re better off taking a swab from the inside of someone’s mouth to get cheek cells as we can normally get more DNA from there than the root of the hair 🙂

Comments