The Effects of Synthetic Substrates on DNA Degradation and Inhibition Using Blood Exposed to High Temperatures

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Presenter(s)

Janae Chase

Abstract or Description

The widespread use of household items made from synthetic materials presents significant challenges in fire-related forensic investigations. When exposed to fire, these materials combust more rapidly than traditional non-synthetic materials, increasing the risk of flashover fires. Hence, DNA samples are degraded and inhibited which creates challenges in DNA recovery and analysis. Despite the growing prevalence of synthetic materials, there remains a critical gap in the forensic community’s understanding of how these materials impact DNA analysis following a fire event, as well as effective strategies to mitigate their effects.

This research aims to assess the extent to which synthetic materials contribute to DNA degradation and inhibition when exposed to high temperatures, using human blood as the source of DNA. Blood will be applied to several synthetic and non-synthetic substrates and exposed to different temperatures through direct flame or radiant heating. It is hypothesized that the synthetic materials may lead to higher degradation indexes (DI) and an increase in stochastic effects, such as heterozygote peak height imbalance, lower relative fluorescent units (RFU) values, allele dropout/drop-in, and locus dropout in DNA profiles when compared to non-synthetic materials.

The findings of this research will have significant implications for forensic investigations, particularly in obtaining DNA profiles from arson, and other fire-related crimes.

Mentor

Matthew Regentin