Molecular Biology in Forensic Science. Topic 5: Looking ahead at an impactful future

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10931630/

 Special Issue “Molecular Biology in Forensic Science"  March 1st, 2024 

Molecular Biology has been a revolutionary tool in contributing to advancing forensic science. It has been used for criminal investigations, paternity complications, identifying missing people, and justifying those that are wrongly convicted. Earlier techniques that were used were restriction fragment length polymorphisms, while today electrophoresis and next-generation sequencing has become the standard to forensics. Through better identification of species, miRNA has been used as a stable biomarker for forensic investigations and clinical diagnoses. These biological approaches have promising potential in strengthening the reliability of science in both the legal and healthcare field. 

Importance:  This article shows the importance of how impactful molecular biology concepts can be in forensics. They improve the approach to investigating and diagnosing, make conclusions in crime scenes more reliable, and can be used outside the forensic science field like for population genetics and speciation. I believe that molecular biology can enforce justice in the legal system. It is very common for people to get wrongly convicted with crimes due to limited evidence. However, molecular biology can provide detailed breakdowns of DNA and allow a safe society because it shows who actually committed the crimes.

I learned more information about how the emerging technologies in NGS and microRNA work to provide DNA and identification analysis. Questions I have are: Why are miRNA better as biomarkers? Can other fields like chemistry be applied to forensics?

Vocab: 

forensic: Latin word of "forensis" relating to law

pathology: "patho" is a disease. The study of diseases

Biomarker: "bio" life, "marker" indicator. Measures things in organisms

                                      Picture from explorehealthcareers.org

Establishing new genomic surveillance Topic 4: Addressing the uprising in Monkey Pox

 https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/31/5/24-1299_article

Real-Time Use of Monkeypox Virus Genomic Surveillance, April 2025

Mpox, or known as Monkeypox, is an infectious virus that is caused by direct human contact or through animals. It has been significantly endemic to western and central Africa. However, its transmission started to spread to many other countries in 2022. The countries included Spain, Canada, United States, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. From this sudden outbreak, Genomic surveillance took place to determine epidemiologic linkages. Through conducted data from the surveillance, it showed that the rare descent of A.2.1 was found from travelers from non endemic regions. There was seen to be 92 nucleotide differences compared to other lineages, showing it came from a distinct origin.

Importance: This article shows the importance of using Genomic surveillance to investigate the details of widespread viruses, like Mpox. With this usage, public health was able to determine which linage caused the number of Mpox cases and identified most of the pathogen sequences. I chose this article because I had remembered when discussion started to occur from the spread of the virus. We had just started recovering from the Covid-19 pandemic and the start of cases were troubling to everyone including me. However, with using Genomic surveillance, we can have clarification on transmissions and know better what actions to take. This impacted the use of global use of data sharing and helped find ways to reduce the spread of the virus in different countries.

I learned how surveillance can be used to build a phylogenetic tree that describes cases from any region! Some questions I have are: By what percent did cases to decrease by? How can genomic surveillance be used to track animal transmission of Mpox?

Vocab:

Orthopoxvirus: ortho-"straight" A genus that comes from zoonotic diseases

Phylogenetic: phylo-"tribe" Diversification of a species or group of organisms

tecovirimat: vir- "virus" Antiviral medication that is used to treat smallpox, monkeypox, and cowpox.

Picture taken from UC Davis Health of a close up of Mpox