Sex Determination Based on Raman Spectroscopy of Saliva Traces for Forensic Purposes

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• 作者：Claire K. Muro ; Luciana de Souza Fernandes ; Igor K. Lednev
• 刊名：Analytical Chemistry
• 出版年：2016
• 出版时间：December 20, 2016
• 年：2016
• 卷：88
• 期：24
• 页码：12489-12493
• 全文大小：309K
• ISSN：1520-6882

文摘

The forensic analysis of body fluids has made great strides in recent years. Body fluids can easily be identified, and DNA analysis can be used to link a stain found at a crime scene to a specific person. When no reference DNA profile is available and the recovered DNA does not yield a match in a database, it would be incredibly useful if the evidence could still provide investigators with useful information. Biocatalytic and immunoassays can be used to determine a donor’s sex, race, and other phenotypic characteristics. However, these tests depend on chemical reactions and are destructive to the sample. Here, we used Raman spectroscopy and multivariate data analysis to develop a nondestructive technique that could be used at a crime scene to determine the sex of a saliva donor. Our internally cross-validated classification model correctly identified 44 (92%) of the 48 donors used for model training. Subsequent external validation correctly identified 11 (92%) of the 12 donors saved for testing. This proof-of-concept study demonstrates the value of Raman spectroscopy as a forensic tool, and indicates that it can be used to elucidate phenotypic information about a body fluid donor. Future studies will expand to other body fluids and additional donor characteristics, such as race and age.