Heinrich Marielle, Matt Katja, Lutz-Bonengel Sabine, Schmidt Ulrike
Institute of Legal Medicine, University of Freiburg, Albertstr. 9, 79104, Freiburg, Germany.
Int J Legal Med. 2007 Mar;121(2):136-42. doi: 10.1007/s00414-006-0131-9. Epub 2006 Nov 18.
Recently, several authors described the observation that RNA degradation does not correlate with the postmortem interval (PMI), but rather with other parameters like environmental impact and the circumstances of death. Therefore, the question arose if the analysis of gene expression could be a valuable tool in forensic genetics to contribute to the determination of the cause of death. In our study, six human tissues obtained from six individuals with PMI varying between 15 and 118 h were used for total RNA extraction. Quantification was performed using a GAPDH real-time assay, and the quality of mRNA was checked by amplification of different fragment lengths of the GAPDH transcript. In our set of samples, nearly all tissues in all PMI revealed satisfactory results, while skeletal muscle, followed by brain and heart, gave the best results. No correlation between PMI and RNA degradation could be detected, as very good results were observed for all tissues from the individual with the longest PMI. The highly promising results obtained in this study raise hopes that in the near future several fields of forensic investigation may profit from additional information about gene expression patterns and their correlation with pathological findings.
最近，几位作者描述了这样的观察结果：RNA降解与死后间隔时间（PMI）无关，而是与其他参数如环境影响和死亡情况相关。因此，基因表达分析是否能成为法医遗传学中有助于确定死因的有价值工具这一问题随之而来。在我们的研究中，从6名个体获取的6种人体组织用于总RNA提取，这些个体的PMI在15至118小时之间。使用GAPDH实时检测法进行定量，并通过扩增GAPDH转录本的不同片段长度来检查mRNA的质量。在我们的样本集中，几乎所有PMI下的所有组织都给出了令人满意的结果，其中骨骼肌效果最佳，其次是脑和心脏。未检测到PMI与RNA降解之间的相关性，因为PMI最长的个体的所有组织都获得了非常好的结果。本研究获得的极有前景的结果让人希望在不久的将来，几个法医调查领域可能会从有关基因表达模式及其与病理结果相关性的额外信息中受益。
