Chemists at the University at Albany, SUNY, have described a new method for quickly but accurately determining a person’s age range based only on a blood sample. The test could one day be used to help narrow down suspects in a crime scene investigation as easily as getting results from a glucose or pregnancy test.
Traditional DNA analysis can take up to 72 hours and carries no reliable information about a person’s age. So team of scientists focused on levels of alkaline phosphatase (ALP), an enzyme found in blood, to determine age.
Using a procedure called a biocatalytic assay, the researchers looked for specific chemicals created by the enzyme’s activity. That allowed them to determine ALP levels, and thus age ranges, with a success rate of nearly 100 percent. Even after leaving the samples on a lab bench for 48 hours to simulate the time that may pass at a crime scene, the results were still just as accurate.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/06/crime-scene-blood-age-suspects-victims-science-forensics/
Paper: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.analchem.6b01169?journalCode=ancham
Traditional DNA analysis can take up to 72 hours and carries no reliable information about a person’s age. So team of scientists focused on levels of alkaline phosphatase (ALP), an enzyme found in blood, to determine age.
Using a procedure called a biocatalytic assay, the researchers looked for specific chemicals created by the enzyme’s activity. That allowed them to determine ALP levels, and thus age ranges, with a success rate of nearly 100 percent. Even after leaving the samples on a lab bench for 48 hours to simulate the time that may pass at a crime scene, the results were still just as accurate.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/06/crime-scene-blood-age-suspects-victims-science-forensics/
Paper: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.analchem.6b01169?journalCode=ancham
