Abstract
Objectives: We provide a systematic review of the literature to evaluate the current research status of protein degradation-based postmortem interval (PMI) estimation. Special attention is paid to the applicability of the proposed approaches/methods in forensic routine practice. Method: A systematic review of the literature on protein degradation in tissues and organs of animals and humans was conducted. Therefore, we searched the scientific databases Pubmed and Ovid for publications until December 2019. Additional searches were performed in Google Scholar and the reference lists of eligible articles. Results: A total of 36 studies were included. This enabled us to consider the degradation pattern of over 130 proteins from 11 different tissues, studied with different methods including well-established and modern approaches. Although comparison between studies is complicated by the heterogeneity of study designs, tissue types, methods, proteins and outcome measurement, there is clear evidence for a high explanatory power of protein degradation analysis in forensic PMI analysis. Conclusions: Although only few approaches have yet exceeded a basic research level, the current research status provides strong evidence in favor of the applicability of a protein degradation-based PMI estimation method in routine forensic practice. Further targeted research effort towards specific aims (also addressing influencing factors and exclusion criteria), especially in human tissue will be required to obtain a robust, reliable laboratory protocol, and collect sufficient data to develop accurate multifactorial mathematical decomposition models.
Highlights
Estimation of time since death represents a central aspect and a complex task in daily forensic casework
To evaluate the current research status and progression of protein degradation-based postmortem interval (PMI) estimation, the present review systematically identifies and summarizes studies that harnessed proteins from animal and/or human tissues for this purpose
An extended Google Scholar search to identify studies not listed in Pubmed and Ovid was undertaken to identify further related articles using the keywords for selected tissues and/or organs as described above, variously combined with the terms ‘time since death’ and ‘forensic’ and ‘postmortem interval’
Summary
Estimation of time since death represents a central aspect and a complex task in daily forensic casework. Besides the testimonies of eyewitnesses and non-scientific criminalistic or scene markers, scientific biomedical techniques are the main sources of time since death estimation [2] Such PMI delimitation methods rely on biochemical, physical and physicochemical body changes, inevitably occurring after death due to the lack of circulating oxygen, cessation of anabolic production of metabolites, altered enzymatic reactions and cellular degradation [3]. These methods allow forensic scientists to calculate back to the starting point of the body changes (i.e., time of death) along a time-dependent curve. Substrates considered susceptible to PMI-related degradation include body fluids such as blood (serum), spinal fluid, vitreous humour, pericardial fluid, and synovial joint [7,8,9], as well as molecular constituents (biomarkers) of various body tissues
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