Nairobi, Feb. 15 -- The Kenya Medical Research Institute (Kemri) is building a forensic reference DNA database that will help the government track down murder suspects, missing persons, disaster victims and sex offenders.

This is according to results obtained after randomly collecting samples from consenting individuals from 20 ethno-linguistic groups in five coastal counties - Kwale, Kilifi, Taita Taveta, Tana River and Lamu. The collection took place over the past three years.

Ms Eva Aluvaala-Nambati, a scientist at Kemri who is leading the project, revealed that they have been going around the country collecting DNA from Kenyans of all ethnicities for the past three years.

"Despite its small size, the mitochondrial genome can be use...