Disputas – Master i biomedisin Nina Mjølsnes Salvo

Avhandlingen er tilgjengelig her!  The doctoral thesis! Prøveforelesning over oppgitt emne holdes kl. 09.15, samme sted: “Forensic Investigative Genetic Genealogy, current possibilities and challenges” . Prøveforelesningen vil også bli strømmet/the trial lecture will also be streamed. Disputasen starter kl. 11.15 i Auditorium Cerebrum. Auditoriet er åpent for publikum, men disputasen vil likevel bli strømmet her. Opptak av disputasen vil være tilgjengelig i et døgn. The auditorium is open to the public, but the defense will also be streamed here. A recording of the defense will be available for 24 hours.

Populærvitenskapelig sammendrag av avhandlingen:

Our DNA store information about appearance such as eye colour, hair colour, skin colour, body height and facial structures. This can be valuable information for the police in criminal investigations where a DNA profile is obtained from the crime scene, but there is no match with a suspect or a database hit.
The focus for this thesis was to evaluate and improve extended DNA tests for police investigations that can give us hints about what an unknown person might look like, similar to an eyewitness. By investigating the DNA from over 750 volunteers in Norway we found that current DNA tests accurately predicts blue and brown eye colour, red and black hair colour, and ancestry on a continental level. Interestingly, more individuals in Norway have blue eye colour than what the tests predicts. We therefore investigated the genes of these individuals and found new connections between the genes and eye colour, which can be used in future DNA tests to increase the accuracy in Scandinavia.

Hovedveileder
Førsteamanuensis Kirstin Janssen, Institutt for medisinsk biologi, Det helsevitenskapelige fakultet, UiT Norges arktiske universitet.

Biveileder
Førsteamanuensis Gunn-Hege Olsen, Institutt for medisinsk biologi, Det helsevitenskapelige fakultet, UiT Norges arktiske universitet.
Førsteamanuensis Thomas Berg, Institutt for medisinsk biologi, Det helsevitenskapelige fakultet, UiT Norges arktiske universitet.

Bedømmelseskomité
Professor Walther Parson, Institute of Legal Medicine, Medical University of Innsbruck / Pennsylvania State University – 1. Opponent.
Forsker Ane Elida Fonneløp, Oslo Universitetssykehus - 2. opponent.
Professor Ole Kristian Greiner-Tollersrud, Institutt for medisinsk biologi, Det helsevitenskapelige fakultet, UiT Norges arktiske universitet. 

Disputasleder: Instituttleder Eva Sjøttem, Institutt for medisinsk biologi, Det helsevitenskapelige fakultet, UiT Norges arktiske universitet.