mRNA profiling in forensic genetics I: Possibilities and limitations

Abstract

Molecular investigations gain increasing interest in forensic medicine. Examination of gene expression levels at the time point of death might have the power to become a complementing tool to the current methods for the determination of cause and circumstances of death. This includes pathophysiological conditions of disease and injury as well as the duration of agony or other premortem factors. Additionally, recent developments in forensic genetics revealed that tissue specific mRNAs can be used to determine the type of body fluid present in a crime scene stain. Although RNA is known to be rather instable, RNA could be extracted in adequate quality from tissue samples collected during medico-legal autopsy. Nevertheless, working with human postmortem tissue means to deal with highly variable RNA integrities. This review aims to give a brief overview of the possible advantages of postmortem mRNA profiling and to shed further light into the limitations of this method arising from reduced RNA integrities.