MicroRNAs, Y Chromosome, and Computational Biology in Forensic Medicine: A Review Study

The analysis of molecular profiles in molecular genetic techniques of forensic medicine has played an important role in developing diagnostic methods. The purpose of this study is to review the latest advances in forensic medicine in the light of modern molecular sciences and their potential and actual applications in forensic medicine.

In this review study,  the related articles were extracted and used from databases such as Google Scholar, PubMed, Magiran, and Scopus using keywords “microRNAs”, “Y chromosome”, and “computational biology”, in a time interval from 2010-2022. 

Due to their short size, miRNAs are promising biomarkers in forensic medicine and are especially valuable for degraded samples or complex mixed samples. miRNA analysis allows the simultaneous identification of hundreds of miRNAs with few copies in a single experiment and can be done using indexing techniques such as microarray techniques. Using these indexes in the crime scene investigations can help to identify and find unknown male perpetrators and their paternal origin. Bioinformatics also provides valuable potentials for forensic medicine by merging mathematics and statistics and molecular genetic techniques.

The development and standardization of efficient and desirable tools for data processing is being done, and more accurate and faster methods have been developed to improve the original methods.