Determination of Telomere Length to Infer Forensic Age

Abstract

Accurate age information is crucial for the identification of criminal cases in the field of forensics. Although the forensic age can be roughly estimated via bone age detection, there was no mature and reliable method for forensic age inference utilizing biological materials such as soft tissue fragments and no other markings left at the scene of the crime. Telomeres are cap-like structures found at the end of chromosomes in numerous tissues and cells and they are made up of repetitive sequences and binding proteins. This paper discussed the possibility of using telomere length to confirm the forensic age of a victim by concerning the biological characteristic of telomere and relevant techniques of length measuring. The structure of telomere enables it to prevent gene loss, fuse with other chromosome ends. Comparisons concentrating on the pros and cons of the existing measure of investigating the telomere are provided in this study by referring to those possible realistic scenes of the crime. As telomere length typically declines with every cell division as a result of the lagging strand's unsuccessful replication, the relationship between the shortening of telomere length and forensic are also shown for various types of cells. Further research in the field of investigating outliers in the pattern of shortening in telomere should be discovered and listed for various types of cells in order to make this method perfect and generalize it. This essay can provide some ideas for the study of telomere length inference of forensic age.