Fingerprinting Using Sweat Pores Could Solve Decade-Old Crimes

Fluorescence sweat pore images on a fingertip. Credit: Kim et al., Nature Communications Many a crime has been solved via fingerprints. But those unique traces of a person's fingertip fade over time. And forensic scientists need pretty much an entire fingerprint to get enough lines to make an accurate identification. Now researchers have a more reliable way of fingerprinting with less of a print: By mapping the tiny sweat pores on a person's finger. Each of the ridges on a person's fingertip is lined with pores. Scientists have known for a century that these tiny holes secrete itty bitty dots of sweat, and that therefore the sweat marks could map an individual fingerprint. But before now there hasn't been a way to easily analyze such sweat-prints.