Use of mRNA Markers for Age Prediction in Healthy and Unhealthy Individuals of Indian Subcontinent

Abstract

Current age estimation techniques rely on morphological features such as teeth eruption, wear and tear pattern, and fusion of skeletal bones at different stages of life. These techniques require the presence of complete or partial human body and sometimes are difficult to perform on living individuals. Age estimation using molecular markers can provide better accuracy and can be performed with very small amount of biological sample found at the crime scene. Recently, mRNA, T-cell specific DNA rearrangements and mitochondrial DNA have been tested for estimating the age, and mRNA was found to be most age correlated. This research aims to use mRNA as a genetic marker to predict the age of Indian subcontinent population, both healthy and unhealthy individuals, by correlating the expression patterns within different age groups. This research provides an insight about the potentials of using mRNA markers to predict biological or chronological age by testing them on both healthy and unhealthy individuals. This study compared the predictive powers of three genes (NRCAM, CFH, and SLC16A10) against healthy individuals and unhealthy individuals. The results showed no significant difference in age prediction between healthy and unhealthy individuals. In order to further confirm the results future studies should include samples from various populations with large sample size to produce more statistically sound data which can further help improve age prediction process in forensic investigations.