The development of a forensic clock to determine time of death. (December 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Sibbens, L.; Van de Voorde, W.; Decorte, R.; Bekaert, B.
• Is Part Of: Forensic science international. Volume 6(2017)
• Page Start: e162
• Page End: e163
• Publication Date: 2017-12
• Subjects: Time of death -- Forensic time estimation -- Circadian hormones -- Circadian gene expression -- Circadian metabolites -- Human blood; Forensic genetics -- Periodicals; Forensic Genetics -- Periodicals; Electronic journals; 614.1
• DOI: 10.1016/j.fsigss.2017.09.059
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1875-1768

Abstract

Abstract: The time and date of a person's death are of great value in forensic investigations. The current time of death estimation techniques however provide large error ranges, especially when post-mortem interval exceeds 24 h. Circadian biomarkers have previously proven their potential use as forensic molecular clock markers to estimate blood-deposition time. More intriguingly, circadian biomarkers identified from the brain transcriptome were also able to estimate time of death. In order to develop a forensic molecular clock for post-mortem blood samples, we designed a study to identify circadian markers in three different classes of circadian molecules using post-mortem blood samples obtained from deceased individuals with a known time of death: mRNA transcripts using RNA-Seq, metabolites with LC–MS/MS and hormone concentrations using ELISA. The current manuscript discusses the melatonin and cortisol results.