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Full-Text Articles in Forensic Biology
Pepper Spray Exposure And The Effect On Dna Profiling Of Blood, Brandon Schmakel
Pepper Spray Exposure And The Effect On Dna Profiling Of Blood, Brandon Schmakel
Honors Projects
Pepper spray is a common self defense tool used in both law enforcement and civilian settings, with the goal of incapacitating the sprayed individual. In real casework where pepper spray was used, a red-brown stain which tested positive presumptively for blood provided no DNA profile after further testing six months later. A previous graduate student, Emma Crawn, attempted to emulate these casework conditions and instead achieved a DNA profile with slight indications of inhibition or degradation. Further analysis of active pepper spray ingredients such as Oleoresin Capsicum (OC) and Chloroacetophenone (CN) reveals that there are observed reactions, such as oxidation, …
Buffer Vs. Swabs: Efficacy Of Carrier Nucleic Acids In Robotic Extractions, Shawn Cecil
Buffer Vs. Swabs: Efficacy Of Carrier Nucleic Acids In Robotic Extractions, Shawn Cecil
Honors Projects
This study compared the efficiency of two carrier nucleic acid methods, specifically using salmon sperm DNA (spDNA), in robotic solid-phase extractions of cotton swab samples. Robotic extractions reduce processing time and workload but result in substantially lower DNA recovery than manual organic extraction. This research tested 10 µg of spDNA being added to the lysis buffer or pre-treating the swabs with it before DNA was added. Both methods showed a significant increase in recovery compared to extractions with no carrier. In the buffer extractions, recovery ranged from 69.4% to 117.5% and the swabs being pre-treated ranged from 84.2% to 125.8% …