Use of Proteomic Methods for Biological Age Estimation at Death

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Biological age at death (AAD) is an important component of the biological profile, to aid investigators in cases with skeletal remains, also in archaeology to aid establishing site context. Current methods rely on predictable patterns of bone or teeth mineralization, growth and fusion or damage over time, though these methods are often subject to inter-/intra-observer error and can only provide adequate data for juvenile remains; leaving adult remains with wide age ranges that do not support investigators. This has led forensics to study archaeological analytic methods of ancient biomolecules, such as DNA and proteins, that are frequently well preserved within bone to allow a host of analytical methods. Previous research has demonstrated applicability of proteomics in forensics and that proteins undergo age-dependent changes by comparing middle to end of long bones. In this research, we used proteomic methods to study changing protein abundances between entire skeletal elements from rats of different ages, to view changes over time. We also compare proteomic methods with other approaches to estimate AAD via amino acid decay, evaluating the most appropriate for forensics. A standardized method of AAD estimation with proteomics is necessary to bring proteomics to forensics as a validated method of age estimation.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• SAA 2021: General Sessions

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32626