About
41
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Introduction
My research applies omics technologies, mostly metagenomics, epigenomics, proteomics and lipidomics to forensic science for the evaluation of the age at death and of the time elapsed since death starting predominantly from skeletal material, including bones and teeth.
Current institution
Current position
- Senior Research Fellow and PI of the ForensOMICS team
Additional affiliations
August 2018 - present
September 2014 - July 2018
Publications
Publications (41)
The “Mass Grave Project” is an interdisciplinary program of taphonomic experiments simulating clandestine mass and single graves with human body donors at the Forensic Anthropology Center, Texas State University (FACTS). It aims to contribute to the development, testing, and validation of scientific methods for mass grave investigation, by increasi...
Liquid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) untargeted metabolomics has become the gold standard for the profiling of low-molecular-weight compounds. Recently, this discipline has acquired great interest in forensic...
Introduction
The accurate estimation of postmortem interval (PMI), the time between death and discovery of the body, is crucial in forensic science investigations as it impacts legal outcomes. PMI estimation in extremely cold environments becomes susceptible to errors and misinterpretations, especially with prolonged PMIs. This study addresses the...
Recent advancements in omics techniques have revolutionised the study of biological systems, enabling the generation of high‐throughput biomolecular data. These innovations have found diverse applications, ranging from personalised medicine to forensic sciences. While the investigation of multiple aspects of cells, tissues or entire organisms throu...
The application of proteomic analysis to forensic skeletal remains has gained significant interest in improving biological and chronological estimations in medico-legal investigations. To enhance the applicability of these analyses to forensic casework, it is crucial to maximize throughput and proteome recovery while minimizing interoperator variab...
The biological evidences that can be found at the crime scene by forensic investigators are among the most diverse. They are characterized by the presence, as a main component, of proteins which represent a significant source of information for forensic scientists. Despite DNA analysis still being the preferred method for analyzing such evidences,...
Considering the growing importance of microbiome analyses in forensics for identifying individuals, this study explores the transfer of the skin microbiome onto clothing, its persistence on fabrics over time, and its transferability from the environment and between different garments. Furthermore, this project compares three specific QIAGEN microbi...
Introduction
Human donations are often used in forensic research as they can provide unique insights into post-mortem research that cannot be obtained with animal proxies. This is especially true for forensic microbiome research, as human circumstances such as drug-use or health conditions may influence the post-mortem microbiome. However, it is no...
The human oral microbiome has primarily been studied in clinical settings and for medical purposes. More recently, oral microbial research has been incorporated into other areas of study. In forensics, research has aimed to exploit the variation in composition of the oral microbiome to answer forensic relevant topics, such as human identification a...
The combined use of multiple omics allows to study complex interrelated biological processes in their entirety. We applied a combination of metabolomics, lipidomics and proteomics to human bones to investigate their combined potential to estimate time elapsed since death (i.e., the postmortem interval [PMI]). This 'ForensOMICS' approach has the pot...
The study of post-mortem changes is a crucial component of forensic investigation. Human forensic taphonomic facilities (HFTFs) are the only institutions allowing the design and execution of controlled human decomposition experiments. When bodies are skeletonized, bones are normally stored in skeletal collections and used for anthropological studie...
The bone proteome, i.e., the ‘osteo-ome’, is a rich source of information for forensic studies. There have been advances in the study of biomolecule biomarkers for age-at-death (AAD) and post-mortem interval (PMI) estimations, by looking at changes in protein abundance and post-translational modifications (PTMs) at the peptide level. However, the e...
Personal identification in mass disasters and in crimes is essential for humanitarian, ethical and legal reasons. In these contexts, when individuals cannot be identified by standard forensic DNA analysis, the Forensic DNA Phenotyping and the analysis of the biogeographical ancestry could help. The aim of this study was to evaluate the potential of...
The combined use of multiple omics methods to answer complex system biology questions is growing in biological and medical sciences, as the importance of studying interrelated biological processes in their entirety is increasingly recognized. We applied a combination of metabolomics, lipidomics and proteomics to human bone to investigate the potent...
The interest in the analysis of the human microbiome for personal identification purposes is based on the microbial diversity amongst individuals. The oral cavity hosts one of the most diverse and abundant microbial communities in the human body; the skin instead is a complex living ecosystem with unique microbial niches at different sites. Both sk...
Tooth Cementum Annulation (or TCA) is a technique that relies on the analysis of the incremental growth of dental cementum for age and season at death estimation. It has been extensively adopted as a “black box technique”, despite numerous controversies. Its potential in forensics called for this review, which aims to provide the reader with an ove...
Bone is a hard biological tissue and a precious reservoir of information in forensic investigations as it retains key biomolecules commonly used for identification purposes. Bone proteins have recently attracted significant interest for their potential in estimating post-mortem interval (PMI) and age at death (AAD). However, the preservation of suc...
Human DNA samples can remain unaltered for years and preserve important genetic information for forensic investigations. In fact, besides human genetic information, these extracts potentially contain additional valuable information: microbiome signatures. Forensic microbiology is rapidly becoming a significant tool for estimating post-mortem interv...
Human DNA samples can remain unaltered for years and preserve important genetic information for forensic investigations. In fact, besides human genetic information, these extracts potentially contain additional valuable information: microbiome signatures. Forensic microbiology is rapidly becoming a significant tool for estimating post-mortem interv...
This paper introduces an actualistic study replicating a small-sized mass grave with donated human remains at the Forensic Anthropology Center, Texas State University (FACTS), and presents the results of the first phase of development of a 3D virtual training tool for mass grave excavation and documentation. The ‘Mass Grave Project’ aims to advance...
Microbiome studies are attracting increasing attention among forensic experts due to their potential to reveal valuable information related to individual identity, including geographical origin, health status, postmortem interval (PMI), and even lifestyle of the deceased[1]. To date, microbiome studies have mostly used animal proxies, allowing for...
Human skin hosts a variety of microbes that can be transferred to surfaces (“touch microbiome”). These microorganisms could be considered as forensic markers similarly to “touch DNA”. With this pilot study, we wanted to evaluate the transferability and persistence of the “touch microbiome” on a surface after the deposition of a fingerprint and its...
Simple Summary
Understanding the origin of bone degradation led by bacterial decomposition is essential in order to allow for the creation of better models to estimate the time elapsed since death for forensic casework, as well as for the preservation of archaeological specimens over the course of time. Within this study we applied modern proteomic...
Bone proteomic studies using animal proxies and skeletonized human remains have delivered encouraging results in the search for potential biomarkers for precise and accurate post-mortem interval (PMI) and the age-at-death (AAD) estimation in medico-legal investigations. The development of forensic proteomics for PMI and AAD estimation is in critica...
Isotope analyses are some of the most common analytical methods applied to ancient bone, aiding the interpretation of past diets and chronology. For this, the evaluation of "collagen yield" (as defined in radiocarbon dating and stable isotope research) is a routine step that allows for the selection of specimens that are deemed adequate for subsequ...
Bone proteomics studies using animal proxies and skeletonized human remains have delivered encouraging results in the search for potential biomarkers for precise and accurate post-mortem interval (PMI) and the age-at-death (AAD) estimation in medico-legal investigations. At present, however, the effects of inter-individual biological differences an...
Decomposition of animal bodies in the burial environment plays a key role in the biochemistry of the soil, altering the balance of the local microbial populations present before the introduction of the carcass. Despite the growing number of studies on decomposition and soil bacterial populations, less is known on its effects on fungal communities....
Methods currently available to estimate the post-mortem submerged interval (PMSI) of cadavers in water suffer from poor accuracy, being mostly based on morphological examination of the remains. Proteins present within bones have recently attracted more attention from researchers interested in the estimation of the post-mortem interval (PMI) in terr...
Background One of the most debated questions in forensic science is the estimation of the post-mortem interval (PMI). Despite the large amount of research currently performed to improve the PMI estimation, there is still the need for additional improvements, particularly in cases of severely decomposed buried remains. A novel alternative to the mor...
The estimation of the time elapsed since death (post-mortem interval, or PMI) is one of the key themes that forensic scientists have to address frequently. However, the estimation of PMI still suffers from poor accuracy and biases especially when decomposition stages are prolonged, so further improvements in methods for PMI estimation are desirable...
Significance:
The estimation of the post-mortem interval has a key role in forensic investigations, however nowadays it still suffers from poor reliability, especially when bodies are heavily decomposed. Here we proposed for the first time the application of bone proteomics to the estimation of the time elapsed from death, and we found some new po...
Proteomic analyses are becoming more widely used in archaeology, particularly for sample characterisation, including species identification, with recent indications of its potential assistance in estimating biological and geological age. However, it remains unclear to what extent different burial environments impact upon aspects of proteome decay....
Aims:
Bacteria are considered one of the major driving forces of the mammalian decomposition process and have only recently been recognised as forensic tools. At this point, little is known about their potential use as 'post-mortem clocks'. This study aimed to establish the proof of concept for using bacterial identification as post-mortem interva...
Significance
Radiocarbon dating of Neanderthal remains recovered from Vindija Cave (Croatia) initially revealed surprisingly recent results: 28,000–29,000 B.P. This implied the remains could represent a late-surviving, refugial Neanderthal population and suggested they could have been responsible for producing some of the early Upper Paleolithic ar...
Proteomic methods are acquiring greater importance in archaeology and palaeontology due to the longevity of proteins in skeletal remains. There are also developing interests in forensic applications, offering the potential to shed light on post-mortem intervals and age at death estimation. However, our understanding of intra- and interskeletal prot...
Significance:
Ancient biomolecule survival remains poorly understood, even with great advancements in 'omics' technologies, both in genomics and proteomics. This study investigates the survival of ancient DNA in relation to that of proteins, taking into account proteome complexity and the relative protein abundances to improve our understanding of...
DNA sequencing has revolutionised our understanding of archaic humans during the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic. Unfortunately, while many Palaeolithic sites contain large numbers of bones, the majority of these lack the diagnostic features necessary for traditional morphological identification. As a result the recovery of Pleistocene-age human rema...
Questions
Question (1)
Hi everyone,
I am trying to find a cheap way to compare the proteomic composition and abundance of some bone samples. In particular, I am expecting to see a reduction in the abundance of some of these proteins as a result of different treatments that I will perform on these bones.
Since I have to exclude HPLC/MS-MS (too expensive) and any other mass spectrometry technique, and since I believe that an SDS page will results in a complex smear (more than 50-60 proteins in the mixture) and a 2D-GE will be too complicated to find differences between my samples, I was thinking to simply quantify my samples in order to compare them. But, since I am expecting some proteins within this mixture being more denatured in same samples than in others, my question is: are protein assays (e.g., Bradford, BCA, etc.) able to provide different quantification results for denatured vs folded proteins? I don't know exactly the chemistry behind them, so anyone able to help me will be extremely appreciated! Any other suggestion will be appreciated as well!
Many thanks!
