EGE 12TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON APPLIED SCIENCES
BIOLOGICAL AGE DETERMINATION BASED ON DNA METHYLATION
Yazarlar:
Fatma CAVUS YONAR
Yayıncı:
Academy Global Publishing House
In the elucidation of criminal incidents, it is necessary to identify the evidence at the crime scene in order to catch the criminal or criminals and protect the rights of the innocent. In forensic genetics, which is an important field in the identification of evidence, many biomarkers have been used from past to present. Although traditional methods used in biological age estimation are based on the analysis of teeth or long bones, it may not be possible to find these remains in every forensic case. Radiologic methods are routinely used to determine the age of individuals by examining the degree of closure of the epiphyseal lines of certain bones, and bone age is determined with various atlases. Molecular methods used in age estimation include mitochondrial DNA deletion, telomere shortening, advanced glycation end products (AGE) and circular excision of T-cell receptors. However, these methods cannot be applied to all body tissues, have high error rates in age estimation and are not suitable for the routine functioning of forensic laboratories. Current methods used by forensic laboratories in age determination are epigenetic mechanisms. One of these mechanisms is DNA methylation. In forensic sciences, DNA methylation-based analyses can be used in the separation of monozygotic twins, biogeographic ancestry analysis, determination of the origin of body fluids, biological age and wound age estimation. DNA methylation has a relationship with the aging process and gene regions related to growth and development are hypomethylated and decreased with aging. Thus, age estimation with low error rate can be done by using age-related gene regions. In this study, the methods used for age estimation, the advantages and disadvantages of these methods are evaluated, how factors such as smoking, dietary habits, exercise and stress change the level of DNA methylation are examined and various inferences are made in the light of the data obtained.
