The implications of shedder status and background DNA on direct and secondary transfer in an attack scenario

•We detected a significant difference amongst individuals in tendency to deposit DNA and classified participants as high or low shedders.•We have seen that the shedder status of an attacker was associated with transfer probabilities during an attack.•We have seen that the shedder status of a person is associated with the probability of detecting secondary transfer.•We observed that DNA from a person that has occupied an area can be secondary transferred to the clothes of another person occupying the same area.

In court questions are often raised related to how trace DNA was deposited, directly during the crime or innocently for instance by secondary transfer. It is therefore of interest to have knowledge of the probability of transfer or secondary transfer in different situations. Factors that could influence transfer probabilities are background DNA and the shedder status of the involved persons. In this study, we have classified participants as high or low DNA shedders. We observed DNA transfer in a simulated attack scenario, and demonstrated that shedder status has a significant influence of transfer rates. We have examined the background DNA in samples from T-shirts worn in an area with frequent human traffic and detected multiple contributors. We further demonstrated that DNA from co-workers of a T-shirt wearer can be secondarily transferred from the environment and detected in samples, and that the composition of background DNA is correlated with the shedder status of the wearer. Finally, we have illustrated the inference with the results of transfer probabilities and a fictive case with the use of a Bayesian network.