DNA Fingerprinting [local] is now widely used in forensics. Because DNA from most humans is almost identical to the DNA from other humans, forensic scientists have had to focus on sensitive ways of looking at the microscopic differences between individuals. The first way was restriction fragment length polymorphism RFLPs [local]. Because the individual variation in a gene is small, DNA had to be screened for many different RFLPs to generate sufficient statistical authority for identifications.

Another method relies on short tandem repeats. [local]