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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.'"
Cue the Monty Python references.
"Quoting yourself is stupid." -Me
are the genes active if the mouse is half-strangled? will these genes be passed on?
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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I understand that the researchers are trying to determine if a subject died by "strangulation or other means" , but here's an easy way to tell if a subject died by decapitation or strangulation without having to resort to costly genetic tests. Measure the distance between the head and neck. If d > 0 , the subject was probably decapitated. I guess this test would be useful in determining if the subject was strangulated before decapitated, but how often are the investigators wondering that.
quis custodiet ipsos custodes
It would be incredible if we discover that our mind and body records in intricate detail our last moments, and that this information can be obtained / downloaded etc. Perhaps through genetics and/or tapping into the brain in the minutes soon after death? The legal implications would be as controversial as the scientific.
O'WONDERWe're working on it.
i take it daddy didn't love you then
My computer frequently send out genetic samples to some researcher somewhere in the world, everytime it dies... no one seems to have a clue yet!
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
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.
Maybe daddy loved him too much....
"Kazuya Ikematsu and his colleagues anesthetized and then killed two small groups of mice, by either strangulation with a string, or by decapitation."
Well, if his experiments don't work out, I'm sure Mr. Ikematsu could always make a few surgical alterations to himself and find gainful employment as a dominatrix for small rodents.
...think of the mice!
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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?
They missed the obvious mistake in this: The "Cause of Death" with these mice is not strangulation or decapitacion, but "bored, cruel scientists with too much time on their hands". Since in both cases the cause of death has been the same, the investigation turned out useless.
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=17102
and my personal favorite6 &cid=14246648
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=17102
That's why the mice where Anaesthetized first.
A witty
What part of "Kazuya Ikematsu and his colleagues anesthetized and then killed" did you not understand?
Well, working on mice is fine but what about the human subjects? These days there's a new group of people arguing that if something works on mice, it needn't necessarily work on humans - like mice developing new brain cells when injected with synthetic cannabinoids. I, for once, would be willing to be a guinea-pig if anyone wants to test the effects of pot on humans. Back to the topic, what still needs to be done is to prove the same theory for humans and let the forensics take over from there.
Such a slaughter does not serve science, and hardly deserves being called science. No matter how 'small' the group might be.
"Science sans conscience n'est que ruine de l'âme" -- Rabelais
(Science without conscience is only ruin of the heart)
because no CS (grad/advanced undergrad) ever gets the job of killing mice for science. I had a friend who was a chem major and he was getting paid $10/hr to hit rats in the head with a piston then anesthetize them and decapitate them to evaluate their brain. I got to code a program that calculates the number of primes less than a certain number. Who is the winner in that contest....
Monstar L
I expect you're very glad the mice were anaesthetized, then, and you were writing to point that out, rather than merely to suggest that the kind of people who get sentimental about dead mice are also the kind of people who aren't good at reading comprehension.
Of course it is possible that the mice deduced the purpose of the anaesthetic and were therefore briefly afraid...
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
is that parent is modded +5 Insightful
/. for things like this
I love
Thank you Dave Raggett
What's with all the PETA flame??? Do people really think using mice in this way is unethical?
/.'er: is this a common opinion among people who post on /., or are those posts just PETA red herrings?
Question for the frequent
Really, do we need to debate the use of labratory mice for experiments such as this?
If your answer is 'yes'...don't expect a response from me...other posters on this thread have said it better than I could already
Thank you Dave Raggett
wow, i have no idea how PETA has not FLIPPED. i have killed a lot of hamsters/mice/rats in my days working in a neuroendocrinology lab and we had to go through hell applying for/making sure our protocols for killing the animals were up to snuff with federal regulation. i wonder how they got permission for the strangulation. plus, it's a rediculous study anyway. what "genes" are they talking about? i assume that they are activated in response to a lack of oxygen because thats what the article stressed. in that case, they could probably just measure lactic acid (lactic acid is the product of an alternative pathway to make ATP when oxygen is not available), degredation products of lactic acid, or ph level in the cytoplasm of the animals cells (ph drops when lactic acid is produced). also, the RNA that they saw an increased transcription of would likeley degrade before any reasonable conclusions could be made. as a last note, if the genes they saw activated were from the pressure of the strangulation, this tells the forensic scientists nothing because the original goal is to determine if "whether someone died by strangulation or suffocation, rather than by some other means," especially in cases where there are no other physical clues. strangulation pressure always leaves a mark.
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I guess you didn't RTFA, or you'd have realised that the researchers ATFR (anesthetized the fsckin' rodents).
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
Reminds me of this episode of voyager where tom paris was sentenced by some race to re-live the last moments of his victim. He was later proven innocent by Tuvok.
I wonder if some sort of brainscan of a victim can ever deliver this sort of detail in the future.
You gotta love the "Read the rest of this comment..." at the bottom of the post. hmmm, I indeed wonder what he will write next.
"My parents said that my friends at the middle school would never teach me anything useful. Now, I have a thorough misunderstanding of Gnosticism, so there. Oh yeah, and I'm a vampire."
Kazuya Ikematsu and his colleagues anaesthetized and then killed two small groups of mice, by either strangulation with a string, or by decapitation.
This story will be 'ripped from the headlines' on the next episode of 'Law & Order: Small Victims Unit.'
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
They are killing mouse. I feel a small disturbance in the force.
(anyone up for any THHTTG quotes?)
If we accept this, are we not morally compelled to stop predators killing prey in the wild?
Yeesh. This is what happens when you force religion on children.
*yawn*
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
What an apposite turn of phrase.
...is science lab.
:>
science is all good, but somewhat this seems slightly sick
Kazuya Ikematsu and his colleagues anesthetized and then killed two small groups of mice, by either strangulation with a string, or by decapitation.
Rich
*place your best RIAA/MPAA joke here*
Stop invalid scientific research. Ask your local scientists to feed their lab rats with a phytoestrogen-free chow.
Not after these guys get through with them.
Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it. --Mark Twain
They should re-do the experiment. This time with big mallots and kittens.
Some say he is made with ascii, others that he is eyeballed daily by millions. All we know is, he is known as the Sig
I'm against what they did too, but it didn't involve pain and/or fear. They anesthetised them before doing the proceedure.
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See subject.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
strangalation with a string??? now thats just *ucked if i did that they woud not call it science i would be called manson :)
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That's a good point. I've always argued that any person (including camera crews, safari members, explorers, and scientists) can (if they so wish) stop predators from killing in the wild.
"But we have to respect the natural order." I couldn't agree more. That's why I'm glad humans are part of nature.
Not only is this just plain unethical, it says essentially nothing. Obviously killing mice in different ways is going to result in different genes being expressed. What was this, a Freshmen Biology experiment? Any one of us could have told them this, and then they wouldn't have had to anesthitize, strangle or decapitate mice!
Register the editry.
depending on the method of slaughter...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
So it's okay to strangle your Uncle Bob to death... so long as I anaesthetize him first? Not stating a position on the matter, just pointing out the obvious.
Personally I am against the killing of animals in a way that causes pain and/or fear. Even for scientific purposes.
You'd prefer these tests be run on humans instead?
Come back when you are actually willing to die in their stead. Then we'll talk.
Until then....squeeeEEEAAAK!
The test mice were all sound asleep when they met their ends, unlike this mouse , who went out a la Peter Jackson's Denethor.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
But is it any more cruel than the typical use of mice as snake food where they are fed live to a snake? Also undoubtedly would induce as much fear as strangulation would, if not more so since the snake situation is exacerbated by facing a natural predator. Personally, I couldn't do that, but it is a widespread accepted practice that seems not very different from this experiment.
However, it does seem rather pointless, considering how specific the test is and it doesn't reflect how useful this would be in humans. I would think it easy to collect samples from cadavers with well known causes of death and test those. Maybe they need shortly before to compare against?
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Causing pain and fear is sometimes necessary. It's the only way you can study the effects of pain and/or fear responses in living things. The biochemistry of pain is obviously of great interest in medicine.
In this case they're finding out what genes are expressed during death by strangulation. While we're well aware that there is a biochemical response in these sitations, it's not been particularly well characterised in terms of the gene expression that's going on at the time.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Let's say you're a mouse. Would you rather be strangled or given cancer, HIV or large doses of other chemicals and studied until you were no longer useful and euthanized. Strangling a mouse seems horrid, but it's one of the more humane things that are done to laboratory animals. I don't like it that animals are treated this way, but if it provides measurable progress toward saving human lives then I'm willing to overlook it. Yes, you might say proving how someone died isn't measurable progress toward saving life but that's not my point.
I think that the lack of a head would be a dead giveaway as to the cause of death...
I worry about the fact that you think you can read the minds of people you don't even know.
I posted this in a reply, but I think it's worth the main thread for consideration. If you were a laboratory mouse and knew you were going to die eventually, wouldn't you rather be strangled than given some horrible disease, exposed to radiation or injected with chemicals and then studied for weeks? Strangulation (even if it wasn't under anesthesia) seems much more humane to me than what is done to many animals. Anything that shows measurable progress toward saving human lives is ok with me. However, this study is definitely questionable in that regard.
Of course it is possible that the mice deduced the purpose of the anaesthetic and were therefore briefly afraid...
You're joking, right?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
We should rephrase that as "we accept the null hypothesis that the head was cut off, with x% of confidence".
Proper determination of confidence limits are left as an exercise to the reader....
For example, I think, it could be useful on study of cryogenics or suspended animation of living organism.
"Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
In Soviet Russia mouse strangles you!
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
...has determined the cause of death to be either rapid incineration or radiation exposure.
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Strangling mice? Was this the Marcel Proust school of biology or something?
Actually I fail to see how anesthesia can ease the pain that derives from not being able to breathe. Unless it is total anesthesia, which does not seem to be the case. But whatever.
These two guys get to talking and the one starts expounding upon a sexual experience he had. "It was the craziest thing. I found this woman tied to the railroad tracks one day. I untied her and the sex I had with her was awesome!" "Did she give you head?" "Naw, I never found the head."
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
Oh, the mousanity!
*ducks*
No, I don't think we are. Because then we'd (presumably) cause the predator to starve to death. So your analogy does not hold.
But if we could do that without causing the predator or anyone else to suffer, yes. And it happens, by the way. That's what people do when they choose not to eat meat, or when they raise their dogs without feeding them meat. (not everyone knows dogs are omnivorous, unlike wolves. It is an adaptation due to the proximity with man)
This is not the innovation it seems to be. For most causes of death there are precise enzymatic and cytological evidence (apart from the obvious macroscopic evidence). Tissues include some very specific cell lines which contain a series of isoenzymes specific for that cell line. For instance a cardiac infract increases the levels of creatine-kinase MB isoenzyme, whereas an ictus would not to the same extent. Furthermore, isoenzymes have different half-lives giving furhter insight to the timing of the events that caused illness or death (in some cases detectable even after a year). This is all info we have today and use in both clincal and forensic practise. The experiment described in article (IMO quite misleading) goes a step further by determining the changes in transcription/translation (the article does not specificy) of DNA following specific lesions. In the not so far away future, I would expect an integration of the actual, biochemical and cytological techinques with the genetic investigation proposed in the article.
Reductio ad absurdum: "I am dying, give me a medicine". "No medicine. Death by disease is part of our nature."
Also, I don't believe the parent's post to be a good point. The predator analogy was fallacious (see my reply to the parent).
"Strangle these animals so we can figure out how they died"
Control mice were killed by decapitation without undergoing neck compression
Dr Ikematsu. In the lab. With a katana.
I'd suspect memory and other processing and so on are still possible in degrading degrees over time so that if pathways in the brain were electrochemically reactivated then it would probably be 'sensed' in some sense by the person even after clinical death. So brain experimentation after death seems a seriously bad idea to sign up for unless they're only testing pleasure center activation.
A related set of side questions involve what holds control and senses of a body to one 'person' anyway? If, for example, two brains were side by side in an operating room and brain molecules could be swapped between them, or say atoms swapped with sufficient technology. Replacing a carbon atom in a brain is the same as before as long as carbon is the same as any other carbon right? Say half of the brain mass is swapped between the two. If you wake them up then who controls who at the end? If they live and react and talk, does the same person control the same body? Does the half that is removed from one simply turn off from that person's perspective? Does one gain sensory aspect of the second? Can 'you' see from two perspectives at once? Is the nature of 'self' gone, the 'soul' stripped away, or are the combinations entirely different people in both sensation and sense of control?
That way, they could scientifically justify choking the chicken.
It makes sense.
Live forever, or die trying.
I would rather be left alone altogether.
what would be the genetic activity in the scientists that did this experiment after being strangled or decapitated. Anyone interesting in doing a try?
Wondering why i am doing so strange posts? I am trying to get a "+5,Flamebait" or "-1,Insightful" rating.
I have a long list.
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There are asphyxiations that provide little or no physical evidence on the body. Smothering someone with a pillow, for example. Now we know there is another way to confirm the cause of death, and it may even be useful in criminal investigations. Knowledge is never useless.
Your sentiment however, is. Crying over dead lab mice? You must have very little to do with your time. I hear they sell rat poison in most hardware and department stores. Better get on that, we can't let the murder of these poor non-sentient disease-spreading rodents continue!
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
Good question. The way I see it, swapping half-brains between people would be a bit like taking two hard drives, chopping the platters in half, and then swapping those. A slightly inaccurate analogy, I admit, but that's what I think the result would be.
The interesting application is in forensics.
It might be interesting when they find out what the proteins really do that are being transcripted at low oxygen levels (or high anxiety?). Since the energy cycle in the mitochondria is well known, I guess it's just not genes that regulate that?
If the heart stops, the blood flow stops. But you can stop the heart for quite a time and restart it. The cells takes time to die.Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
And they'd none of them be missed, no they'd none of them be missed.
The Highly unethical was just because they killed a few mice! :-)
The GP ought to be a vegetarian, that refuses to weed his garden from the poor vegetables. :-)
Or he might be a pet shop boy and have better uses for mice? :-)
My favorite story about double standards, otherwise, is this:
There was a "peace camp" here in Sweden a few years ago, where the protestors complained about a military development project. The peaceheads had problems with "short haired elements" (skinheads) visiting the camps and starting fights. So they hired a guard company to protect themselves.
The fun part is that they couldn't see the parallel between getting security for their camp (the police doesn't work that well in Sweden) and a country having a military (there is no police between countries).
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
...genes can predict the future? Does this mean that if we study genes in people at any age we'll know how they are going to die? That's freakin' scary! ;P
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Puhleeze. This has nothing to do with forcing religion on children. This is a 12 year old who thinks that he can be cool by writing a blasphemous tirade on Slashdot. His basis for the tirade is Gnosticism, which he obviously doesn't really understand.
When I was 12 -14, I liked doing stuff that would piss my parents off too, but it didn't have anything to do with religion. It had to do with being 12 -14.
Jeez o flip people, read the blasted article. They want to identify pathways involved in pressure sensing, not just to determine cause of death. This has implications in general biology and is hardly mindless killing of rodents. Now I'm not saying that this couldn't have been done without sacrifice of the animal, but I would imagine it would be quite hard to get a good mRNA profile of a cell under transient mechnical pressure. Really, how the hell would you do that?
As for all you broadly anti-animal testing people...I can only say that as an SIV monkey researcher myself, really the best and only truly valuable way to study pathophysiology of mant diseases is with an animal model. Really anything in cell culture is much less useful considering how things change when you scale up into an animal with multiple organ systems. Sad but true. So some monkeys/mice/dogs/cats/guinea pigs/ferrets/flies/sea urchins/etc gotta go. I really want to see more sea urchins on PETA shirts though. That would make my day.
I always find it amazing how when a questionable ethical action is reported people dismiss the data without really thinking about it.
First of all, I suspect people do that because of fear of slippery slope. If we allow this data gained by unethical means, how bad will it seem to do something unethical to get the next set of data?
Secondly, I suspect s/he was outraged over the mouse manipulation, not genetics.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
We can really find out who killed Nicole Brown Simpson.
There are several companies marketing a chip where each square reacts with a gene or a marker part (unique characteristic subsection) of DNA. These dont have have to be too large, since theres only 30K human genes and 120K useful markers. You figure out what subset of genes is present or active by looking a pixel image of this chip, where the intensity patterns become a "fingerprint". These are currently being used to see how various human tissues express genes, and if diseases leave genetic fingerprints. Criminal forensic genetic fingerprints are possible too.
"...many mice died to bring us this information."
Oh man, I love PLIF. I gotta say, though, this one's my favorite.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
If you behead the animal then the sympathetic nervous system has no chance of sending any messages to turn on any of the genes in question. However, if you strangle the animal then the sympathetic nervous system reacts and the genes will turn on...
Imagine a row of mice hung by string with little perfect knots.
/. bug #926803 - Why I can post.
.. these hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings are helping us discover the Ultimate Question of Life, Universe and Everything. No need to invoke the PETA and all that, thank you very much.
I can't, but I can read his post. He seems to believe that people who kill mice in the name of science are really doing it in order to satisfy sadistic desires. Unless he's seen a study or had a lot of experience in the field, I don't think he really knows what their modivations are.
No kidding. The sadism angle is the strangest thing in this whole thread. I think the potential mouse-strangler would just buy feeder mice at a pet store, take them home, and strangle them. Why all the work and publicity?
Plus the original poster seems to have a lot of sex-related issues to deal with. But I guess that's being 12-14 also.
I actually thought that his reference to sexual ritual was Gnostic in nature, but, perhaps he just has sexual issues. I didn't read closely enough to say "oh, he refers to beastiality here."
Though, you're right.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
What if... in the distant future the brain of a murder victim could be read by observing it's chemical state to determine all thoughts and state of mind at time of death, including what the victim saw as he/she was being killed. I know, impossible, but I feel a bad Hollywood plot coming on with John Travolta in the starring role...
Who is this delectable creature with an insatiable love of the dead?
No, not people who kill mice in the name of science in general, just these particular people, because their "research" is so obviously junk. My guess is that they do it as some sort of joke, perhaps aiming for an ignobel or something. I don't think that's an acceptable reason to strangle your laboratory mice. And I don't have to be a mind reader to speculate about their motives. I do that all the time, as do you, I expect. We are entitled to, because we are people ourselves.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
Is it that important to know what a person (or animals) genes are doing at their time of death. I'm not an animal activist but strangling and decapitating mice just to see what their genes are doing is stupid. What's more important, finding out who killed someone or how that person died? I would think finding out who is more important. If determining what a persons genes are doing at their time of death is that important then why not just conduct the test in hospitals on dead people. Oh wait, that's inhumane.
The medicine is made by nature (humans). Therefore, it is natural. Now gimme my prozac.
Why do you think this is junk? Sure, this is just a proof of concept study, but it could lead to some useful techniques.
My guess is that they do it as some sort of joke, perhaps aiming for an ignobel or something.
This sounds like pure speculation to me.
I don't have to be a mind reader to speculate about their motives.
I have no problem with you speculating, but you seemed quite sure of yourself, more so than the evidence would support.
We are entitled to, because we are people ourselves.
Sure, but it's rude to ascribe sadistic motives to someone without any support. Do you like it when someone does it to you?
"Sure, but it's rude to ascribe sadistic motives to someone without any support. Do you like it when someone does it to you?"
No, but I would have had to give them a point if they caught me strangling little animals...
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