A survey of the incidence of missing anterior teeth: potential value in bite mark analysis.

Bite mark analysis involves comparison of individual dental characteristics between a dentition and the bite injury. A bite mark injury may result from sexual assault, or physical assault, and defensive injuries, and as such can be used to link a suspect to a victim or vice versa. Missing teeth are one of the characteristics that could implicate or exclude a suspected biter. However frequency data for use by forensic odontologists can only be collated from epidemiological studies. Therefore an audit was undertaken of missing anterior teeth in adult patients (n = 1010) attending for treatment, gathering data that could be more relevant to odontology. One in five of the sample presented with missing teeth that were either replaced with a denture (11%), not replaced (6%) or missing with the gap closed (2%).     

Identifying a suitable mounting medium for use in forensic fibre examination.

As the result of a previous study many laboratories have used XAM neutral medium-improved white mounting medium in textile fibre examination for more than 20 years. Due to European Directive 98/79/EC, XAM is no longer available and an alternative needed to be found. A list of desirable properties was formulated and a number of mounting media were tested against this. Entellan New was identified as the best mounting medium, and performed similarly to XAM in all aspects.     

Successful DNA typing of ultrafiltered urines used to detect EPO doping

Endogenous and exogenous erythropoietin (EPO) present in urine can be distinguished according to their isoelectric profiles. This methodology requires urine samples to be concentrated about 200 to 1000 times with manipulations that should remove most of the cells occurring in the original sample. In this study, we tried to obtain DNA profiles from 10 ultrafiltered urines (retentates) in order to evaluate whether a formal genetic identification was technically feasible. No nuclear DNA profiles could be established from retentates, despite 34 PCR-cycles amplifications. Contrastingly, mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) profiles were obtained for 9 out of the 10 retentates. Apart from some particularities, retentate mtDNA profiles were all distinct and matched mtDNA profiles of corresponding reference samples.     

The polymorphism of plasminogen (PLG) by ultrathin-layer isoelectric focusing. Distribution in the Veneto population (Italy)

The distribution of plasminogen phenotypes in the population of Veneto was investigated by ultrathin-layer isoelectric focusing. In our sample (n = 1325), the three common phenotypes PLG1, PLG2, PLG2-1 and two further phenotypes PLG1-V and PLG2-V were, observed and the following frequencies calculated: PLG1 = 0.84038; PLG2 = 0.15811; PLGV = 0.00151. These gene frequencies are compared to those found in other populations. Analysis of 41 mother-child pairs was in agreement with an autosomal codominant inheritance.