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Potential forensic biogeographic application of diatom colony consistency analysis employing pyrosequencing profiles of the 18S rDNA V7 region

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Abstract

Diatom examination has always been used for the diagnosis of drowning in forensic practice. However, traditional examination of the microscopic features of diatom frustules is time-consuming and requires taxonomic expertise. In this study, we demonstrate a potential DNA-based method of inferring suspected drowning site using pyrosequencing (PSQ) of the V7 region of 18S ribosome DNA (18S rDNA) as a diatom DNA barcode. By employing a sparse representation-based AdvISER-M-PYRO algorithm, the original PSQ signals of diatom DNA mixtures were deciphered to determine the corresponding taxa of the composite diatoms. Additionally, we evaluated the possibility of correlating water samples to collection sites by analyzing the PSQ signal profiles of diatom mixtures contained in the water samples via multidimensional scaling. The results suggest that diatomaceous PSQ profile analysis could be used as a cost-effective method to deduce the geographical origin of an environmental bio-sample.

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Funding

This work was supported by a grant from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (reference numbers 81571861 and 81630054).

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Author notes

  1. Yuancun Zhao and Xiaogang Chen contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Forensic Genetics, West China School of Basic Medical Sciences & Forensic Medicine, Sichuan University, No.17, 3rd Section, South Renmin Road, Chengdu, Sichuan, People’s Republic of China

    Yuancun Zhao, Xiaogang Chen, Yiwen Yang, Xiaohong Zhao, Shu Zhang, Zehua Gao, Ting Fang & Ji Zhang

  2. Department of Pathophysiology, West China School of Basic Medical Sciences & Forensic Medicine, Sichuan University, No.17, 3rd Section, South Renmin Road, Chengdu, Sichuan, People’s Republic of China

    Yufang Wang

Authors
  1. Yuancun Zhao
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  2. Xiaogang Chen
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  3. Yiwen Yang
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  4. Xiaohong Zhao
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  5. Shu Zhang
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  9. Ji Zhang
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Correspondence to Yufang Wang or Ji Zhang.

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Zhao, Y., Chen, X., Yang, Y. et al. Potential forensic biogeographic application of diatom colony consistency analysis employing pyrosequencing profiles of the 18S rDNA V7 region. Int J Legal Med 132, 1611–1620 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00414-018-1849-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00414-018-1849-x

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