Rivers David B, Acca Gillian, Fink Marc, Brogan Rebecca, Chen Dorothy, Schoeffield Andrew
Department of Biology, Loyola University Maryland, Baltimore, MD, 21210.
Institute for Neuroscience, Department of Psychology, Texas A & M University, College Station, TX, 77843.
J Forensic Sci. 2018 Nov;63(6):1704-1711. doi: 10.1111/1556-4029.13756. Epub 2018 Feb 21.
Insect stains produced by necrophagous flies are indistinguishable morphologically from human bloodstains. At present, no diagnostic tests exist to overcome this deficiency. As the first step toward developing a chemical test to recognize fly artifacts, polyclonal antisera were generated in rats against three distinct antigenic sequences of fly cathepsin D-like proteinase, an enzyme that is structurally distinct in cyclorrhaphous Diptera from other animals. The resulting rat antisera bound to artifacts produced by Protophormia terraenovae and synthetic peptides used to generate the polyclonal antisera, but not with any type of mammalian blood tested in immunoassays. Among the three antisera, anti-md3 serum displayed the highest reactivity for fly stains, demonstrated cross-reactivity for all synthetic peptides representing antigenic sequences of the mature fly enzyme, and bound artifacts originating from the fly digestive tract. Further work is needed to determine whether the antisera are suitable for non-laboratory conditions.
食尸性苍蝇产生的昆虫污渍在形态上与人类血迹无法区分。目前，尚无诊断测试来克服这一缺陷。作为开发一种化学测试以识别苍蝇痕迹的第一步，在大鼠中针对苍蝇组织蛋白酶D样蛋白酶的三个不同抗原序列产生了多克隆抗血清，该酶在环裂双翅目中的结构与其他动物不同。所得的大鼠抗血清与新陆原伏蝇产生的痕迹以及用于产生多克隆抗血清的合成肽结合，但在免疫测定中不与任何类型的哺乳动物血液结合。在这三种抗血清中，抗md3血清对苍蝇污渍显示出最高的反应性，对代表成熟苍蝇酶抗原序列的所有合成肽表现出交叉反应性，并与源自苍蝇消化道的痕迹结合。需要进一步的研究来确定这些抗血清是否适用于非实验室条件。
