Journal of Forensic Research

DNA Quantity and Quality Assessment Using Vwa and D18S51 Primers and Morphological Comparision of Fresh and Soil Incubated Human Hair

Abstract

Amulyaratna Behera*, Ayaskanta Nayak, Shruti Rajwar, Varsha Singh, Vikash Kumar and Suchismeeta Behera

A crime scene is encountered by several types of evidence. Hair is common evidence that we mostly encountered in maximum of crime scenes. Being important and common evidence, hair found in any crime scene helps in a forensic investigation. Hair can be obtained from 6 different parts of body like head hair, eye brows and eyelashes hair, beard and moustache hair, underarm hair, body hair and pubic hair. Hair is a well-known target to identify the age, sex, colour, race, species identification, disease profile, environmental exposure, metal poisoning, and both nuclear and mitochondrial DNA analysis. But in this study we have taken 2 parameters for the examination, the morphological difference and nuclear DNA quality & quantity difference. Here we have compared between the fresh and soil stored hair with the above parameters. Upon the analysis of the hair samples under electronic compound microscope with the mentioned parameters, it is found that there is negligible or no difference in case of morphology. While determining the quantity and quality of the DNA with the help of UV-Spectrophotometry, we found a significant difference in DNA quality and quantity between fresh and soil stored hair within a specific time gape. We have also compared between Vwa and D18S51 primer by using these fresh and stored hair sample’s DNA. This study on hair would be helpful in further forensic examination and research.