Highlights
- •Persistence of blood depends on various investigated parameters.
- •Optimized DNA/RNA analysis strategy provides promising results.
- •Number of foreign alleles detected is marginal.
- •Luminol has a high sensitivity and thus is important for targeted blood sampling.
Abstract
Blunt force traumas by footwear can result in severe and even fatal head and upper
body injuries. Oftentimes, footwear impressions are only partially available and evidential
value is limited. DNA evidence on shoe soles could provide crucial evidence helping
to solve crimes by linking target DNA to the activity of interest. Little is known
about the persistence and detectability of biological material post such offenses
and the interplay of factors affecting the analytical success. In this study, we assessed
the persistence of blood on shoe soles under varying parameters such as blood location,
different sneakers, weather condition, gait, amount of blood, underground and step
count. We applied an optimized DNA/RNA workflow adapted to micro-traces without constraints
for the primary DNA pipeline. There is a high probability to link donor DNA to the
shoe sole for up to 300–400 steps, regardless of the underground, blood location,
and amount of blood. Depending on the sole material and the degree of abrasion of
the sole, a longer blood persistence can be observed. Considering blood, 98.2% of
the initial DNA amount (1 μl initial blood volume) was lost after 100 steps walked
on sole areas that are in constant contact with the ground. Proportion of foreign
DNA was marginal (avg. 4.4 alleles), minimizing the probability of unintentional DNA
transfer in this context. RNA typing showed high specificity but lower sensitivity
than presumptive tests used for body fluid identification (BFI). Luminol is essential
for targeted sampling on shoe soles, as latent blood traces (>100–200 steps) provided
sufficient biological material for DNA/RNA typing. The generated data help to address
the activity of interest and evaluate probabilities about prevalence of target DNA
important for casework implications and assessments on activity level.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: December 01, 2021
Accepted:
November 29,
2021
Received in revised form:
November 12,
2021
Received:
September 16,
2021
Identification
Copyright
© 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
