Forensic Proteomics for the Discovery of New Interval Biomarkers: A Preliminary Study.

Estimating the time since death ( interval, PMI) represents one of the most important tasks in daily forensic casework. For decades, forensic scientists have investigated changes in body composition, focusing on different physical, chemical, or biological aspects, to discover a reliable method for estimating PMI; nevertheless, all of these attempts remain unsuccessful considering the currently available methodical spectrum characterized by great inaccuracies and limitations. However, recent promising approaches focus on the decomposition of biomolecules. In particular, significant advances have been made in research on the degradation of proteins. In the present study, we investigated early changes (during the first 24 h) in the proteome profile of the pig skeletal muscle looking for new PMI specific biomarkers. By mass spectrometry (MS)-based proteomics, we were able to identify a total of nine potential PMI biomarkers, whose quantity changed constantly and progressively over time, directly or inversely proportional to the advancement of hours. Our preliminary study underlines the importance of the proteomic approach in the search for a reliable method for PMI determination and highlights the need to characterize a large number of reliable marker proteins useful in forensic practice for PMI estimation.