IIT BHU Tops at Forensic Hackathon 2025

• 25 Apr 2025

Why in News? 

The research team from the School of Biochemical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (BHU), Varanasi has won top honours at the Forensic Hackathon 2025. 

• This hackathon was part of the All India Forensic Science Summit organised by the National Forensic Sciences University (NFSU) . 

Key Points 

• About the Award:  
  • The award was presented by the Union Home Minister at Vigyan Bhavan in New Delhi . 
  • The team was awarded a cash prize of Rs 2 lakh and a memento for their innovative research . 
• Developed Technology:  
  • The team has developed a glycan-based forensic technique that allows accurate age estimation based on biological fluids, i.e., it can be used to estimate the exact age of a person even without DNA . 
    • This technology combines glycomic profiling with machine learning algorithms to estimate both chronological age and biological age . 
  • Currently practiced DNA-based forensic analyses , which incorporate epigenetic markers , have biological variability and technical limitations . 
    • DNA methylation-based models often require ancient and good-quality DNA, which may be unavailable in forensic cases. 
• Importance: 
  • This innovation can make profiling of suspects based on samples collected from crime scenes more accurate, especially when DNA matches are not available. 
  • This technology could be useful in identifying missing persons, identifying unidentified victims in mass disasters , and verifying claims of being a juvenile or misrepresenting age . 
  • Biological age provides important evidence about a person's health, immune status and stress, which can help in reconstructing a crime . 
    

Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA) 

• Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is an organic molecule with a complex molecular structure. 
• The strands of a DNA molecule are made up of a long chain of monomer nucleotides. It is arranged in a double helix structure. 
• James Watson and Francis Crick discovered that DNA is a double-helix polymer in the year 1953. 
• This is necessary for the transfer of genetic characteristics of organisms from one generation to another. 
• Most of the DNA is found in the nucleus of the cell, so it is called central DNA.