FUTURE TRENDS IN FORENSIC SCIENCES

Year 2017, Volume: Volume 2 Issue: İssue 1 (1) - 2.İnternational Congress Of Forensic Toxicology, 302 - 302, 16.02.2017

Kadir Demircan

Abstract

Recent advances in
genetics/genomisc/proteomics have started to reveal novel knowledge about the
genes and mechanism involved in forensic biology and genetics.

In Latin, mortis means “of
death”. When describing a recent death, evaluating the early post-mortem
interval or relating the “fresh” stage of decomposition to the corpse,
oftentimes the mortis triad is invoked. This triad is concerned with the onset
and eventual dissipation of three aspects of the death process: rigor mortis (a
temporary stiffening of the musculature primarily due to the failure of
sarco/endoplasmic reticulum Ca2+-ATPase (SERCA) pumps) , algor mortis (the
cooling of the body to ambient temperatures since the metabolic regulation of
body core temperature has failed), and livor mortis (the settling of blood in
dependent areas of the body). What has historically been omitted from death
investigations has been the value of odor mortis – or the “smell of death”. The
advantage to the death investigator of expanding the triad into a tetrad is
that the ‘smell of death’ lingers well past the fresh stage of decomposition
and, as the odor changes and migrates, can be a valuable aid to investigators
in the areas of post-mortem interval (PMI) determinations location of
clandestine graves, and verification of decompositional events.

DNA testing for observable
charecteristics or “Forensic DNA Phenotyping (FDP)” is a emerging new field of
forensic genetics. To date, FDP mostly involves the prediction of human
observable externally visible characteristics (EVCs; skin tone, hair color, eye
color, face shape, male baldness, adult body height, freckling, left-handedness
and ethnicity, etc), and sometimes the inference of bio-geographic ancestry
(the biogeographical ancestry: BGA). If appearance information of an unknown
sample donor can successfully be obtained from a crime scene this information
is expected to be useful during police investigation. Recently, at least for
one EVC, eye colour, the accumulated knowledge has already been used to produce
a forensically validated DNA test (VisiGen Consortium; The Identitas Chip-2012,
led by Dr. Manfred Kayser) suitable for forensic case work applications.

The sudden death of a young, apparently
fit and healthy person is amongst the most challenging scenarios in clinical
medicine. Sudden cardiac death (SCD) is a devastating and tragic outcome of a
number of underlying cardiovascular diseases. In up to 30% of young SCD, no
cause of death is identified at postmortem, so-calledautopsy-negative or sudden
arrhythmic death syndrome (SADS). Where no cause of death is identified,
genetic testing of DNA extracted from postmortem blood, the molecular autopsy,
may identify a cause of death in up to 30% of SADS cases.

Herein, we will summarize the
current information on the future trends such as odor signatures, DNA
phenotyping and molecular autopsy, and how this new knowledge may be applied to
criminal investigations.

 

Keywords

FUTURE TRENDS IN FORENSIC SCIENCES

References

• Kadir DEMİRCAN
• Department of Medical Biology, Turgut Ozal University School of Medicine, Ankara, Turkey