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Genetic Clues to Cause of Death?
An anonymous reader writes "Nature is reporting that a certain 'telltale genetic fingerprint' may help scientists to more accurately determine a cause of death. From the article: 'Now a team at Nagasaki University has shown that a person's own genes might help to reveal how they met their end. Kazuya Ikematsu and his colleagues anesthetized and then killed two small groups of mice, by either strangulation with a string, or by decapitation. They dissected skin samples from the animals' necks and compared the activity of a broad spectrum of genes inside the skin cells, by looking at the amount of RNA pumped out by those genes. The researchers found four genes that were more active in the strangled animals than those that had died suddenly.'"
Not even that suprising but I never thought about it. If the oxygen level in the cells decreases that of course has an effect on the creation of rna.
If a creature dies suddenly the total blood flow stops and so the flow of all chemicals instead of just oxygen (and maybe a few others).
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Apart from this being highly unethical there's these points
1) the GENES have nothing to do with it. They're measuring mRNA expression, which is not the same thing. Strangulation does not change your genes dammit.
2) It's a bit bloody obviuous not? Strangulation has known consequences, and we've known for ages that shortage of osygen has an effect on gene expression levels. So in the very specific case thay could have made the distinction. But just observing the body will give you more info in 5 min than the $1000 microarray will give you in two days.
The researchers found four genes that were more active in the strangled animals than those that had died suddenly.
And guess who strangled the animals those death in order to do this research?