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Sorry, but this fundamentally misunderstands how sequencing technology works. The kind of DNA sequencing you do on the population/genome scale is of relatively low quality and depends on a reference genome. It is not a de novo sequencing. Particularly challenging are repetitive sequence areas; high-throughput sequencing utilizes short reads that cannot be unambiguously assembled or mapped in these areas. If you have two sequences that have AGAGAGAGA... on their ends, you cannot determine to what degree they overlap. Only reads that span the repetitive sequence with sufficient margins can be unambiguously assembled or mapped. DNA fingerprinting, however, relies precisely on robust characterization of these repetitive sequences. These sequences experience many errors during replication that produce high diversity in a population. Your unique suite of sequence lengths is used to identify you. This is assessed with restriction digest fragment length polymorphism analysis (RFLP analysis), an entirely different technology from high-throughput sequencing. These repetitive sequences are also difficult to synthesize, for the same reasons it fails in real organisms. RFLP analysis is, therefore, about the most robust way you generate a DNA 'fingerprint'. This situation changes if the sequencing technique used generates longer reads. Thus-far, the economical option always uses short reads, and this technique is perfectly suitable for the kinds of analysis done. It would take a breakthrough in sequencing technology for this to change, which is certainly plausible, but is not the current reality. A future concern, perhaps, but science fiction for now. |