Artificial intelligence in the practice of forensic medicine: a scoping review.

Forensic medicine is a thriving application field for artificial intelligence (AI). Indeed, AI applications intended to forensic pathologists or forensic physicians have emerged since the last decade. For example, AI models were developed to help estimate the biological age of migrants or human remains.

Automatic detection and identification of diatoms in complex background for suspected drowning cases through object detection models.

The diagnosis of drowning is one of the most difficult tasks in forensic medicine. The diatom test is a complementary analysis method that may help the forensic pathologist in the diagnosis of drowning and the localization of the drowning site. This test consists in detecting or identifying diatoms, unicellular algae, in tissue and water samples.

Gene expression in Fusarium graminearum grown on plant cell wall.

Fusarium graminearum is a phytopathogenic filamentous fungus attacking a wide range of plants including Humulus lupulus (hop). Transcriptional analysis of F. graminearum grown on minimal media containing hop cell wall or glucose as the sole carbon source was performed by applying a highly stringent method combining microarrays and a subtracted cDNA library.

A rape case solved by mitochondrial DNA mixture analysis.

In cases of stains that contain mixed DNA from different contributors, analyzing mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) requires the use of cloning techniques. We developed an efficient cloning technique that was applied in a rape case. After a differential lysis-based DNA extraction from vaginal swabs, hypervariable region I and II (HVI, HVII) amplicons obtained from the male fraction were cloned.

Resolving paternity relationships using X-chromosome STRs and Bayesian networks.

X-chromosomal short tandem repeats (X-STRs) are very useful in complex paternity cases because they are inherited by male and female offspring in different ways. They complement autosomal STRs (as-STRs) allowing higher paternity probabilities to be attained. These probabilities are expressed in a likelihood ratio (LR).

Fusarium graminearum on plant cell wall: no fewer than 30 xylanase genes transcribed.

The transcription of a set of 32 putative xylanase genes from Fusarium graminearum was examined by quantitative PCR after growth on different carbon sources (hop cell wall, xylan, xylose, or carboxymethylcellulose). Growing on plant cell wall medium, this fungus displays a great diversity of expression of xylan-related genes, with 30 being induced. A second level of diversity exists because expression patterns can be very different for loci encoding enzymes with the same activity (the same EC number).

An overview of fungal community diversity in diseased hop plantations.

Samples were taken from several hop fields presenting various symptoms. Fifty-nine pure filamentous fungal strains were isolated and identified through genomic DNA preparations, PCR amplification of the ribosomal DNA internal transcribed spacer region and database interrogations. The most frequent genera were Alternaria (16 isolates) and Epicoccum (14 isolates).

Diversity of the exoproteome of Fusarium graminearum grown on plant cell wall.

The exoproteome of the fungus Fusarium graminearum grown on glucose and on hop (Humulus lupulus, L.) cell wall has been investigated. The culture medium was found to contain a higher quantity of proteins and the proteins are more diverse when the fungus is grown on cell wall.

Use of genes encoding cellobiohydrolase-C and topoisomerase II as targets for phylogenetic analysis and identification of Fusarium.

Molecular identification and phylogenetic studies rely to a large extent on rDNA sequence polymorphism. In the field of fungal taxonomy, despite the use of huge amounts of rDNA data available, some species within a given genus remain indistinguishable. Therefore, new target sequences need to be selected and validated.

Application of a yeast method for DNA extraction associated with database interrogations for the characterization of various filamentous fungi from diseased hop.

Filamentous fungi were collected from diseased hop (Humulus lupulus; L.) and DNA was prepared from 19 isolates. The critical step of cell lysis was carried out using zymolyase for fungal cell wall digestion.

Development of a bipartite method for Fusarium identification based on cellobiohydrolase-C: CAPS and Western blot analysis.

The identification of 12 Fusarium strains isolated from diseased hops (Humulus lupulus, L.) was achieved by a strategy based on cellobiohydrolase-C: cleaved amplified polymorphic sequence analysis targeting the gene and the use of an antibody directed against a peptide of the Fusarium graminearum enzyme. This strategy is shown to be rapid and reliable for all the Fusarium of our collection: F.