Identification of Human Remains for Forensic and Humanitarian Purposes: From Molecular to Physical Methods, 2nd Edition

A special issue of Genes (ISSN 2073-4425). This special issue belongs to the section "Molecular Genetics and Genomics".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 25 February 2025 | Viewed by 1435

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Forensic Molecular Anthropology Laboratory, Department of Biology, University of Florence, 50122 Florence, Italy
Interests: forensic molecular anthropology; human remains identification; DNA; STRs; SNPs; phenotyping; biogeographical ancestry; massively parallel sequencing
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Guest Editor
Laboratorio di Antropologia e Odontologia Forense (LABANOF), Sezione di Medicina Legale, Dipartimento di Scienze Biomediche per la Salute, Università degli Studi di Milano, 20133 Milan, Italy
Interests: forensic anthropology; forensic pathology; clinical forensic medicine; identification; migration; unidentified decedents; ambiguous loss
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue, entitled “Identification of Human Remains for Forensic and Humanitarian Purposes: From Molecular to Physical Methods, Volume II”, is the second volume of the Special Issue “Identification of Human Remains for Forensic and Humanitarian Purposes: From Molecular to Physical Methods”, which has published TEN papers.

The identification of human remains, that is, the ability to allocate a name to an unidentified person, is an important part of a wider and complex multidisciplinary process and a crucial step in contributing to the proper and healthy functioning of a civil society and justice. The process of identifying a person in forensic and humanitarian contexts (for example, in disaster victim identification (DVI) and missing persons identification (MPI) scenarios) does not just represent a legal necessity/duty, but also a fundamental right of all individuals and their families; this is for administrative, criminal, civil and ethical reasons, and in order to avoid the flail of ambiguous loss for relatives seeking their loved ones. The identification process involves a comparison of information of various kinds provided by someone (a family member, a colleague, a friend) who knows the person (antemortem data) with the scientific information obtained by a range of forensic experts during the examination and study of human remains (postmortem data). Over the past twenty years, we have seen the development of novel technologies in diverse scientific fields, as well as improvements in existing ones that have allowed us to obtain results that until recently were not technically feasible and affordable.

This Special Issue aims to investigate recent advances in the identification of human remains. It focuses on collecting reviews and original contributions that consider the importance of a multidisciplinary approach to supporting the identification phases of human remains, as well as innovative methodological aspects, bioinformatics and statistical tools, and future prospects of forensic/humanitarian research.

Prof. Dr. Elena Pilli
Prof. Dr. Cristina Cattaneo
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • skeletal remains
  • missing persons
  • identification process
  • DNA analysis
  • forensic anthropology
  • forensic odontology
  • human rights

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

15 pages, 2158 KiB  
Article
Exploring the Potential of Genome-Wide Hybridization Capture Enrichment for Forensic DNA Profiling of Degraded Bones
by Christian Haarkötter, Xavier Roca-Rada, María Saiz, Diana C. Vinueza-Espinosa, Xiomara Gálvez, María Isabel Medina-Lozano, Daniel Díaz-Ruiz, Juan Carlos Álvarez, Bastien Llamas, Jose Antonio Lorente and Jeremy Austin
Genes 2025, 16(1), 23; https://doi.org/10.3390/genes16010023 - 26 Dec 2024
Viewed by 940
Abstract
In many human rights and criminal contexts, skeletal remains are often the only available samples, and they present a significant challenge for forensic DNA profiling due to DNA degradation. Ancient DNA methods, particularly capture hybridization enrichment, have been proposed for dealing with severely [...] Read more.
In many human rights and criminal contexts, skeletal remains are often the only available samples, and they present a significant challenge for forensic DNA profiling due to DNA degradation. Ancient DNA methods, particularly capture hybridization enrichment, have been proposed for dealing with severely degraded bones, given their capacity to yield results in ancient remains. Background/Objectives: This paper aims to test the efficacy of genome-wide capture enrichment on degraded forensic human remains compared to autosomal STRs analysis. Methods: Six highly degraded human bones from the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) were quantified with Quantifiler Trio and amplified with GlobalFiler. Independently, partially UDG-treated double-stranded DNA libraries were generated and shotgun sequenced to screen for endogenous human DNA content. Subsequently, libraries were enriched with the Twist Bioscience “Twist Ancient DNA” reagent enrichment kit, which had not been previously tested for forensic purposes. Results: The results show that the samples behave similarly with both approaches (well-preserved samples yield good results). However, capture enrichment provides some new relevant insights, suggesting that its implementation in current NGS forensic platforms could be beneficial. Conclusions: Shotgun results show that the analyzed samples exhibit the same characteristics as ancient DNA samples in terms of DNA fragmentation and molecular damage, which may enhance the value of this approach when authenticating the endogenous DNA of forensic samples. Full article
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