Department of Cardiac, Thoracic, Vascular Sciences and Public Health, University of Padova, Via Falloppio 50, 35121, Padua, Italy.
Department of Molecular Medicine, Laboratory of Forensic Genetics, University of Padova, Via Falloppio 50, 35121, Padua, Italy.
Int J Legal Med. 2019 Nov;133(6):1629-1640. doi: 10.1007/s00414-019-02125-x. Epub 2019 Jul 18.
Post-mortem interval (PMI) determination is one of the most important issues in forensic sciences. In the past, forensic scientists provided different approaches (physical, chemical, and entomological) for the estimation of PMI without success.However, advances in molecular biology over the last two decades have allowed us to assess the time-dependent degradation of biological markers (e.g., proteins, DNA, and RNA). Thus, the aim of the manuscript is to provide a review of the recent progress in the estimation of PMI using molecular biology methods, mainly focusing on the potential usefulness of RNA markers. To this end, 29 studies have been systematically reviewed, each one chosen according to specific inclusion/exclusion criteria. The selected studies evaluated the contribution of endogenous reference genes in different biological samples in order to determine the PMI based on post-mortem RNA degradation as a function of other influencing factors such as time, cause of death, and environmental conditions.
死后间隔时间（PMI）的确定是法医学中最重要的问题之一。过去，法医学家们提供了不同的方法（物理、化学和昆虫学）来估计 PMI，但都没有成功。然而，过去二十年分子生物学的进步使我们能够评估生物标志物（如蛋白质、DNA 和 RNA）随时间的降解情况。因此，本文的目的是综述利用分子生物学方法估计 PMI 的最新进展，主要侧重于 RNA 标志物的潜在有用性。为此，我们系统地回顾了 29 项研究，每项研究都是根据具体的纳入/排除标准选择的。所选研究评估了内源性参考基因在不同生物样本中的作用，以便根据死后 RNA 降解情况以及其他影响因素（如时间、死因和环境条件）来确定 PMI。
