Forensic application of comet assay: an emerging technique

Abstract

Postmortem interval (PMI) estimation is a recurring problem in the field of forensic medicine. Conventional methods are effective but are insufficient to estimate accurate and precise time of death or PMI. In addition, degradation of biological samples is another major problem in forensic science which affects the investigation process and misleads the result. Some previous studies reported that DNA fragmentation has strong correlation with PMI. DNA fragmentation increased with prolonged PMI. Comet assay is a rapid sensitive, versatile, reliable and cost effective technique that is specifically used for qualitative and quantitative estimation of nuclear DNA fragmentation. Due to this attribute, comet assay can help to estimate accurate and precise time of death for some extent that is for early PMI estimation. In addition, two confounding factors are responsible for DNA fragmentation: (1) micro-organism; (2) environmental condition. Here, comet assay plays a dual role: (1) partially degraded samples get repaired using repair enzyme; (2) accurate time since deposition can be measured without using repair enzyme. Furthermore, this assay can also help to identify potential exposures of environmental-released chemicals/toxicants and its deleterious effects on human population. In this way, comet assay shows its versatile applications that could be useful for forensic investigation. Therefore, with the help of this review, an attempt was made to explore the versatility of comet assay technique for forensic applications and its future perspective.