Review: micrornas as effective molecular biomarkers for identification and determination the nature of biological samples in legal genetics

Azam Soleimani,1,*

1. Legal Medicine Research Center, Legal Medicine Organization, Tehran,Iran.

Abstract

Introduction

It has been proven that dna information obtained from biological samples (e.g., semen, vaginal fluid, blood, sweat, oral fluid, and saliva ) play a very important role in solving judicial cases. methods of screenings consist of presumptive and confirmmative are based on chemical, enzymatic and antigen-antibody methods. most of these tests are limited in specificity or sensitivity. also, in some cases, dna samples may also be lost in these tests. so, in many cases the identification and determination of their nature is not always possible with serological tests, and the response of these experiments is incompatible with the results of dna typing. therefore, new complementary tools are needed to identify of biological samples. the purpose of this study was to introduce molecular markers as a valuable tool in identify the source of biological samples discovered in the crime scene.

Methods

A targeted search has been conducted in the pubmed, science direct and scopus electronic databases and more than relevant and up-to-date studies have been conducted in this field.

Results

Recent advances in molecular genetics technologies have shown that identification biological samples using molecular markers will provide valuable information for the reconstruction of crime scenes, especially in those cases where serological tests fail to identify samples. numerous studies have shown great interest in the use of micrornas as biomarkers suitable for the identification of various body fluids. micrornas are non-encoding rna molecules with a length of about 25-18 nucleotides that contain a lot of information compared to mrna, and there is a lot of attention on their small size. in addition, micrornas have been shown to be specific for different specimens and are able to identify biological samples even after long periods of time under uncontrollable conditions with promising patterns. an extracted mirna will remain at room temperature for one year intact without damage and can be stored at -20 ° c for up to 10 years. thus, micrornas are ideal candidates for determination the origin of biological samples in the legal genetics. simultaneously extract microrna and dna from a biologic sample will provide a very interesting and cost effective opportunity to determine source of sample and as well as a profile of person. so, specific of the micrornas to identify and distinguish different samples of forensic is a promising method specifically in the determination the nature of the biological samples and the separation of the mixed specimens

Conclusion

Profiling mirna can be a promising alternative to the identification of biological fluids associated with legal cases. therefore, considering the low sample size and the limitations of the serological tests in sensitivity specificity, using these biomarkers will significantly increase the validation of samples in the future.

Keywords

Legal genetics, serological tests, biomarker, micrornas