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Identifying hypothermia death in a mouse model by ATR-FTIR

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Abstract

The identification of hypothermia death (HD) is difficult for cadavers, especially the distinction from death due to alternative causes. A large number of studies have shown that brown adipose tissue (BAT) plays critical roles in thermoregulation of mammals. In this study, BAT of mice was used for the discrimination of HD using attenuated total reflection-Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR). A modified mouse HD model conducted by Feeney DM was used in this study to obtain infrared spectra of BAT. Principal component analysis (PCA), partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA), and orthogonal partial least squares discriminant analysis (OPLS-DA) were used to establish discrimination models. The PLS-DA and OPLS-DA models exhibit prominent discriminative efficiency, and the accuracy of HD identification using fingerprint regions and ratios of absorption intensity is near 100% in both the calibration and validation sets. Our preliminary study suggests that BAT may be an extremely effective target tissue for identification of cadavers of HD, and ATR-FTIR spectra combined with chemometrics have also shown potential for cadaver identification in forensic practice in a fast and accurate manner.

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Data availability

The datasets used and analyzed during the current study are presented in the figures, and they are available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request.

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Funding

This study was supported by the key research and development plan in Shaanxi, Grant/Award Numbers 2020SF-204 and 2022JZ-53; the Key Innovative Project in Shaanxi, Grant/Award Number 2021ZDLSF02-02; and the National Natural Science Foundation of China, Grant/Award Number 81671476.

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Author notes

  1. Tangdong Chen, Mao Sun these authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, School of Basic Medicine, Shaanxi Provincial Key Laboratory of Clinic Genetics, The Air Force Medical University, Xi’an, 710032, China

    Tangdong Chen, Mao Sun, Bowen Li, Yufeng Wang, Juan Zhang, Changwei Xu, Yawen Yu, Lijuan Yuan & Yuanming Wu

  2. Department of General Surgery, Tangdu Hospital, The Air Force Military Medical University, Xi’an, 710038, China

    Lijuan Yuan

Authors
  1. Tangdong Chen
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Contributions

Yuanming Wu and Mao Sun conceptualized the overall idea, message, and structure. Tangdong Chen and Lijuan Yuan wrote the bulk of the manuscript and created the figures. All authors contributed additional text specific to individual studies described in the manuscript. The authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Lijuan Yuan or Yuanming Wu.

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Ethics statement

Written informed consents were obtained from all participants. The mouse model was established under technical and facility support of local laws and institutional guidelines. All studies were approved by the ethics approval from the Air Force Medical University.

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

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Highlights

• An objective and rapid method for the identification of hypothermia death was presented.

• Brown adipose tissue was detected by ATR-FTIR for the first time.

• ATR-FTIR combined with chemometrics showed potential roles for forensic identification.

Supplementary Information

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Supplementary file1 (DOCX 998 KB)

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Chen, T., Sun, M., Li, B. et al. Identifying hypothermia death in a mouse model by ATR-FTIR. Int J Legal Med 138, 1179–1186 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00414-023-03156-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00414-023-03156-1

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