Post-Mortem Interval and Age-at-Death Estimation through Forensic Proteomics

Summary

The estimation of the post-mortem interval (PMI) and the age-at-death (AAD) are both important aspects of forensic anthropology for which numerous methods have been developed, each with different limitations.

As proteins represent biomolecules that carry out a wide range of functions, many of which structural to the tissues undergoing decomposition, and the collection of these (i.e., the proteome) is dynamic not only throughout life, but also post-mortem, proteomic methods have great potential in forensic archaeology.

Here we present the innovative use of proteomics to investigate AAD from pig bones of different biological ages collected from an experimental forensic scenario. Furthermore, we explored the proteome variability of bones extracted from pigs that have been buried for different PMIs, to better understand the leaching phenomena associated with taphonomic events as well as the decay of proteins post-mortem. Our results showed relationships between the abundance of particular serum proteins with AAD, and glutamine deamidation with PMI, revealing the suitability of proteomics to forensic contexts.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 21998