Forensic genetics and genomics: Much more than just a human affair

Abstract

While traditional forensic genetics has been oriented towards using human DNA in criminal investigation and civil court cases, it currently presents a much wider application range, including not only legal situations sensu stricto but also and, increasingly often, to preemptively avoid judicial processes. Despite some difficulties, current forensic genetics is progressively incorporating the analysis of nonhuman genetic material to a greater extent. The analysis of this material—including other animal species, plants, or microorganisms—is now broadly used, providing ancillary evidence in criminalistics in cases such as animal attacks, trafficking of species, bioterrorism and biocrimes, and identification of fraudulent food composition, among many others. Here, we explore how nonhuman forensic genetics is being revolutionized by the increasing variety of genetic markers, the establishment of faster, less error-burdened and cheaper sequencing technologies, and the emergence and improvement of models, methods, and bioinformatics facilities.

Forensic DNA Technological Advancements as an Emerging Perspective on Medico-Legal Autopsy: A Mini Review

“…In essence, the similarities in analog and ortholog variable components of genomes provide forensic investigation of nonhuman biological substances in the same manner as for human forensics, but distinctions existing in different organisms and species, i.e., genomic architectures, reproductive strategies and genetic diversity, are continuously broadening the dependent scientific areas. The benefits stemming from the extension of forensic genetics toward nonhuman relations were clearly recognized decades ago [225], and the incorporated application of animal, plant or microorganisms has been actualized in a large scale of caseworks, from animal attacks [226,227] to bioterrorism [228], as well as in wildlife crimes [229,230], identification of food composition [231,232], Cannabis sp. chemotyping [233,234], and even the estimation of postmortem interval and skin microbiomes [235,236].…”

Microbial forensics: new breakthroughs and future prospects

“…The success of such measures relays in the quantity and quality of the data collected on isolate identification (to the strain level), location of possible sources, definition of possible reservoirs, vectors and intermediary host, determination of transmission routes or evolution dynamics (Schürch and Siezen 2010). Over the preceding decades, the number of epidemic and pandemic has been increasing, examples of the latest cases of pathogens' outbreaks are (Arenas et al 2017;Oliveira et al 2018): Mycobacterium tuberculosis (tuberculosis; 2006, Canada; Gardy et al 2011), Acinetobacter baumannii hospital outbreak (2008, United Kingdom;Lewis et al 2010), swine-origin influenza A (H1N1 virus;, America, 2009Smith et al 2009), Vibrio cholerae (cholera;2010, Haiti;Hendriksen et al 2011), the Middle East respiratory syndrome hospital outbreak (MERS coronavirus;2012, Saudi Arabia;Assiri et al 2013), avianorigin influenza A (H7N9 virus;2013, China;Kageyama et al 2013), Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli O104:H4 (2014, Germany; Grad et al 2012), Ebola (Ebolavirus;2014, Sierra Leone;Cenciarelli et al 2015), poliomyelitis (Poliovirus;2014, Middle East;Aylward and Alwan 2014), Legionnaires' disease (Legionella pneumophila;2014, Portugal;Borges et al 2016) and Zika virus (2015, Brazil;Faria et al 2016).…”

“…These recent developments have led to an increasing use MPS over conventional Sanger sequencing (Bano et al 2015;Clarke et al 2017;Schmedes et al 2017). Such advances, like the ability to sequence single isolates with de novo assembly, read mapping, targeted sequencing of specified genes or other regions of interest (e.g., hypervariable regions of 16S and 18S rRNA genes, 16S-23S rRNA intergenic spacer region, SNPs, indels) (Sijen 2015) and metagenomics (Børsting and Morling 2015;Franzosa et al 2015), ensure a growing capacity of identification and characterization of microbial communities, paving the way for the use of microbial evidence in cases associated to human identification, geolocation and postmortem interval estimation, amongst other applications (Arenas et al 2017;Kuiper 2016).…”

“…Although phylogenetic analyses have supported associations and have successfully been admitted as evidence in criminal cases, the fundamental limitations to the widespread application of MF are the non-existence of both standards and guidelines and the deficiency of reference databases, reference genome sequences, metadata and representative genetic diversity coverage (Arenas et al 2017;Sjödin et al 2013).…”

Genetics on a maize cob: A teaching tool for schools

“…Technologies derived from the understanding of genetics have revolutionized healthcare and agriculture through novel diagnostics, vaccines, medicines including personalized medicines, improved breeds of animals and crops and so on. Besides, genetic technologies are being increasingly used in forensics (Arenas et al 2017). Recent developments in gene editing (Knott and Doudna 2018) and gene drive technologies (Collins 2018) have raised great concern about ethical and moral dimensions of genetics based technologies (Brossard et al 2019;Custers et al 2019).…”