Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Manchester Institute of Biotechnology, University of Manchester, 131 Princess Street, Manchester M1 7DN, U.K.
J Proteome Res. 2021 Jan 1;20(1):538-548. doi: 10.1021/acs.jproteome.0c00555. Epub 2020 Oct 22.
Establishing biological age is an integral part of forensic investigations, currently achieved through morphological methods with varying degrees of accuracy. Furthermore, biological ageing is much easier in juveniles than in adults, at which point traditional ageing methods struggle. Therefore, biomolecular approaches are considered of great interest, with several protein markers already recognized for their potential forensic significance. However, previous studies have typically relied on subsampling different parts of skeletal elements. Here, we attempt to evaluate the proteome of complete elements using a rat model. In the analysis of specimens spanning beyond adulthood (1 week to 1.5 years), we observed 729 unique proteins across 33 samples (three for each sex for each of the five (female) or six (male)), five of which represent newly identified proteins in relation to age estimation: vimentin, osteopontin, matrilin-1, apolipoprotein A-I, and prothrombin. Most of these follow the trend of decreasing abundance through age, with the exception of prothrombin that increases. We consider the combined use of these relative abundances, along with those of previously noted fetuin-A, biglycan, albumin, and chromogranin-A signatures, as being of potential value to the development of an age estimation tool worthy of further evaluation in forensic contexts.
建立生物年龄是法医学调查的一个组成部分，目前通过形态学方法以不同的准确度来实现。此外，生物老化在青少年中比在成年人中更容易，此时传统的老化方法就会遇到困难。因此，生物分子方法被认为具有很大的兴趣，已经有几种蛋白质标记物因其潜在的法医学意义而得到认可。然而，以前的研究通常依赖于对骨骼元素的不同部分进行抽样。在这里，我们尝试使用大鼠模型来评估完整元素的蛋白质组。在对超出成年期（1 周到 1.5 年）的标本进行分析时，我们在 33 个样本中观察到了 729 种独特的蛋白质（每种性别各有 3 个样本），其中 5 种与年龄估计有关的新蛋白质：波形蛋白、骨桥蛋白、软骨寡聚基质蛋白-1、载脂蛋白 A-I 和凝血酶原。这些蛋白质中的大多数随着年龄的增长而减少，而凝血酶原则增加。我们认为，结合使用这些相对丰度，以及以前注意到的胎球蛋白-A、核心蛋白聚糖、白蛋白和嗜铬粒蛋白-A 特征，对于开发一种值得在法医学背景下进一步评估的年龄估计工具具有潜在价值。
