Estimates of elapsed time and personal identification from human blood sucked by mosquitoes

2016 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 26460885
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Legal medicine
• Research Institution: Saitama Medical University
• Principal Investigator: HARA Masaaki 埼玉医科大学, 医学部, 准教授 (50129160)
• Research Collaborator: HIROSHIGE Yuuji ; OGAWA Hisae ; HIKITSUCHI Tomoyuki ; UMEDA Mitsuo ; KAWAJIRI Yumi ; NAKAYAMA Koji ; SUZUKI Koichi ; TAKADA Aya ; ISHII Akira
• Project Period (FY): 2014-04-01 – 2017-03-31
• Keywords: 蚊 / STR / Y-STR / 個人識別 / 吸血経過時間推定 / DNA定量

Outline of Final Research Achievements

In warm and hot seasons, fed mosquitoes are often observed at crime scenes. This study attempted to estimate the time that elapsed since feeding from the degree of human DNA digestion in mosquito blood meals and also to identify the individual human sources of the DNA using genotyping in two species of mosquito: Culex pipiens pallens and Aedes albopictus.
The extracted DNA were quantified using a human DNA quantification and QC kit and were genotyped for 15 STRs and 17 Y-STRs using a commercial multiplexing kits. It took about 3 days for the complete digestion of a blood meal, and genotyping was possible until 2 days post-feeding. The relative peak heights of the 15 STRs and DNA concentrations were useful for estimating the post-feeding time to approximately half a day between 0 and 2 days.
We suggest that this study may be very useful for estimating the time since a mosquito fed from blood meal DNA, although further refinements are necessary to estimate the times more accurately.

Free Research Field

法医学