I wonder if DNA will actually become less usable in convictions as a result of these sorts of developments. With it being easier to identify an individual based on DNA at a crime scene, eventually someone is going to be accused and turn out to have an ironclad alibi proving they couldn't have done the crime, even though their DNA was present.
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DNA as evidence already has a lot of issues:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/06/a-reaso...
Hopefully,
because at this point incriminating fragments can already be bought.
https://www.idtdna.com/pages/products/custom-dna-rna/dna-oli...
To coat an entire crimescene with synthesized oligos will be prohibitively expensive.
True if you did it that way.
Which is why you would buy (or make) one and PCR the rest.
Besides if it aligns with the authorities goals it would not take much.
Here's a case where that happened:
somehow I prefer when there's no silver bullet, it forces society to take time and think deep.. well ideally
If someone downloads my DNA from 23andMe, they can't really plant it at a crime scene can they?
Even if they could synthesize DNA from that information, they'd need to mix it with SOMETHING to show that it's not planted. Is the information collected by 23andMe even close to accurate enough to do something like this?
In the article Someone1234 commented in sibling apparently the innocent suspect's DNA was on the victim (they think maybe because she rode in his cab).