Potential use of human hair shaft keratin peptide signatures to distinguish gender and ethnicity.

Background: Most human hairs collected at old crime scenes do not contain nuclear DNA and are therefore of less value for forensic investigations. In the present study, hair shaft proteins were extracted from 40 healthy subjects between the ages of 21 to 40 years and profiled using gel electrophoresis-based proteomics to determine if they can be used to distinguish gender and ethnicity.

Methods: Extraction of the human hair shaft proteins was performed using a newly developed alkaline solubilisation method.