Forensic onychology: An essential entity against crime.

ABSTRACT

Forensic Onychology (Greek word, Onuks = nail, Logia = study of) is the subject which deals with study of fingernails and toenails for better administration of justice in the court of law. Identification means determination of individuality of a person. Nails are important tissues for human identification. One of the major advantages of utilizing nail is that, in comparison with other tissues, sample size and sampling process can be considered relatively non invasive and non destructive and yet each nail retains a discrete record of detailed information on genetic inheritance, drug use, pathology, diet and location history as well as exposure to explosives residues or other pollutants. In contrast to soft tissues, nails survive relatively well in the decomposition environment. Furthermore, in contrast to other long lasting tissues (such as bone and teeth) nails are easy to decontaminate from external sources of DNA. Thus examination of nail is very useful in many ways against crime. In this paper, we discussed about structure and method of analysis of nail, utility of examination, drug use and nails and detection of DNA from nails.