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Genetic Clues to Cause of Death? 248

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the clues-in-both-sets-of-genes dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Nature is reporting that a certain 'telltale genetic fingerprint' may help scientists to more accurately determine a cause of death. From the article: 'Now a team at Nagasaki University has shown that a person's own genes might help to reveal how they met their end. Kazuya Ikematsu and his colleagues anesthetized and then killed two small groups of mice, by either strangulation with a string, or by decapitation. They dissected skin samples from the animals' necks and compared the activity of a broad spectrum of genes inside the skin cells, by looking at the amount of RNA pumped out by those genes. The researchers found four genes that were more active in the strangled animals than those that had died suddenly.'"
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Genetic Clues to Cause of Death? More

Genetic Clues to Cause of Death?

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  • "...by either strangulation with a string..." (Score:5, Funny)

    by Aranth Brainfire ( 905606 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @06:36AM (#14434428)
    Cue the Monty Python references.

  • Good thinking (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mtenhagen ( 450608 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @06:37AM (#14434435) Homepage
    Not even that suprising but I never thought about it. If the oxygen level in the cells decreases that of course has an effect on the creation of rna.

    If a creature dies suddenly the total blood flow stops and so the flow of all chemicals instead of just oxygen (and maybe a few others).
    • I have to agree with the Anon poster. This is quite uninteresting for the general public.

      The interesting application is in forensics.

      It might be interesting when they find out what the proteins really do that are being transcripted at low oxygen levels (or high anxiety?). Since the energy cycle in the mitochondria is well known, I guess it's just not genes that regulate that?

      If a creature dies suddenly the total blood flow stops and so the flow of all chemicals instead of just oxygen (and maybe a few

  • seriously... (Score:5, Funny)

    by PrinceAshitaka ( 562972 ) * on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @06:38AM (#14434441) Homepage
    I understand that the researchers are trying to determine if a subject died by "strangulation or other means" , but here's an easy way to tell if a subject died by decapitation or strangulation without having to resort to costly genetic tests. Measure the distance between the head and neck. If d > 0 , the subject was probably decapitated. I guess this test would be useful in determining if the subject was strangulated before decapitated, but how often are the investigators wondering that.
    • I guess this test would be useful in determining if the subject was strangulated before decapitated, but how often are the investigators wondering that.
      I feel a bad "CSI" plot coming on.
      • Actually, it was a Columbo episode. The guy strangled his wife, then came back a couple hours later and shot her, then turned himself in for shooting her.
    • Actually the mouse was originally poisioned, but it showed no ill effects so they shot with a pistol, and later clubbed by several large men. The body was tied up and thrown in the river... Autopsy reports now show that the mouse died of drowning.

  • Nature's Black Box? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Wonderkid ( 541329 )
    It would be incredible if we discover that our mind and body records in intricate detail our last moments, and that this information can be obtained / downloaded etc. Perhaps through genetics and/or tapping into the brain in the minutes soon after death? The legal implications would be as controversial as the scientific.

    • Re:Nature's Black Box? (Score:5, Funny)

      by _Hellfire_ ( 170113 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @07:09AM (#14434542)
      Not to mention funny:

      http://plif.andkon.com/archive/wc123.gif [andkon.com]

    • Re:Nature's Black Box? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by necro2607 ( 771790 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @07:43AM (#14434646)
      Who knows, I mean we have memory, don't we? I wonder how long that memory is 'stored' once a person dies?

      People have supposedly reached clinical death for some time and awoken after a short period. Surely these peoples' minds weren't simply "wiped".

      It sounds kind of farfetched at first but when you think about it, your idea isn't so unrealistic...
      • People have supposedly reached clinical death for some time and awoken after a short period. Surely these peoples' minds weren't simply "wiped".

        Neural synapses are physical and therefore have physical positions inside the mind in order to form memories.

        So yeah, if you get revived soon enough you won't loose all your memories like if you turned a computer off.

        However, synapses are biological and need oxygen and nutrients to keep from dying, withering, and decaying just like any other part of the body... So i
        • So technically if you could keep the brain alive after death, and figured out how to read the physical structure of the synapses, you could theoretically run into the same plot as The Final Cut.

          • So technically if you could keep the brain alive after death, and figured out how to read the physical structure of the synapses, you could theoretically run into the same plot as The Final Cut.

            Yeah... But that would be a moot point because that would require non-destructive brain scanning technology and if we had that level of technology we'd probaly wouldn't have to worry about death anymore. *coughs* Or rather upload people into computers to be simulated as AI, but thats another can of worms.

            There are fa
      • I don't know, could be like modern-day RAM where you lose it the instant you lose power.

        Any person whos brain has been without oxygen for an extended period of time has come back with *major* personality changes and lost memories.
        • I don't know, could be like modern-day RAM where you lose it the instant you lose power.

          it's actually a lot like modern day RAM, exept the "power down" time is around 15 minutes after "clinical death". Information is not only contained in the configuration of the neurons, is is also contained in the current state of the electric charge between them. Thus, when the brain "powers down", quite a lot of information is lost.
      • I feel this is rather obligatory, but... Have you ever read Passage [amazon.com] by Connie Willis? The whole boks is about near death experiences and what the images seen really mean. Okay, it's fiction but it's interesting fiction, and it makes you think....

  • What about Blue Screen of Death? (Score:3, Funny)

    by jkrise ( 535370 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @06:40AM (#14434456) Journal
    My computer frequently send out genetic samples to some researcher somewhere in the world, everytime it dies... no one seems to have a clue yet!

  • Wrong (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Ubi_UK ( 451829 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @06:42AM (#14434464)
    Apart from this being highly unethical there's these points
    1) the GENES have nothing to do with it. They're measuring mRNA expression, which is not the same thing. Strangulation does not change your genes dammit.
    2) It's a bit bloody obviuous not? Strangulation has known consequences, and we've known for ages that shortage of osygen has an effect on gene expression levels. So in the very specific case thay could have made the distinction. But just observing the body will give you more info in 5 min than the $1000 microarray will give you in two days.

    • Re:Wrong (Score:5, Funny)

      by Ed_1024 ( 744566 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @07:02AM (#14434520)
      I can now announce, after years of research and thousands of mice, that it is possible to differentiate between them having being killed by a blender, a hacksaw or just plain deep-frying. I am now working on staple guns, sulfuric acid and gamma rays but as yet do not have a statistically significant sample because the pet shop has run out of mice and I have had to switch to fluffy bunnies.

    • I always find it amazing how when a questionable ethical action is reported people dismiss the data without really thinking about it.

      It is about gene expression not changing the genes. RTFA.

      The whole point is that, for example, stress on the skin may boost the expression of certain genes leaving molecular markers in the body that forensic tests could pick up. That is, the type of stress may leave markers when the other physical clues are far less obvious that simple dcapitation.

      • I always find it amazing how when a questionable ethical action is reported people dismiss the data without really thinking about it.
        First of all, I suspect people do that because of fear of slippery slope. If we allow this data gained by unethical means, how bad will it seem to do something unethical to get the next set of data?
        Secondly, I suspect s/he was outraged over the mouse manipulation, not genetics.
    • Wont decapitation reduce the oxygen circulating in the body?
    • What if you want to determine how someone died thousands of years ago and all you have is a bone fragment, eh?

      Where's the "highly unethical" come in? Is it also unethical for people to sacrifice pigs and chickens to ward off bad omens? Bear in mind that there are still many tribes in the world that do this practice.

  • Kinky. (Score:4, Funny)

    by Phariom ( 941580 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @06:43AM (#14434466)
    "Kazuya Ikematsu and his colleagues anesthetized and then killed two small groups of mice, by either strangulation with a string, or by decapitation."

    Well, if his experiments don't work out, I'm sure Mr. Ikematsu could always make a few surgical alterations to himself and find gainful employment as a dominatrix for small rodents.

  • Wont somebody... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by squoozer ( 730327 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @06:45AM (#14434475)

    ...think of the mice!

    • Mmm, mice.... Crispy and with ketchup. Yummy!
    • YES!

      Human volunteers would get much more useful information.

  • Detectives, rejoice! (Score:5, Funny)

    by meringuoid ( 568297 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @07:01AM (#14434518)
    No longer will there be any doubt over whether the murder victim was strangled or beheaded, which has in the past been a cause of great difficulty in investigations due to the lack of any very obvious physical feature that might distinguish a decapitation victim from someone who has been hanged. You'll now have access to a DNA test to put the question beyond doubt.

    Isn't progress wonderful?

    • No longer will there be any doubt over whether the murder victim was strangled or beheaded, which has in the past been a cause of great difficulty in investigations due to the lack of any very obvious physical feature that might distinguish a decapitation victim from someone who has been hanged.

      Funny, but to be fair, just because somebody's head is cut off doesn't necessarily mean it was the cause of death. They could have been shot or stabbed (or strangled) or anything else before hand and the head cut

      • and the head cut off later.

              Provided you have access to the wound any patholgist can tell you if this was done before or after death.
      • This kind of strategem is old hat for mystery writers: disguise the method of death in order to establish an alibi or to obscure a motive.

        Fortunately, this kind of thing has no practical application in real life. What stymies real detectives is lack of information, not misinformation. While murderers are by in large stupid people, you seldom have people stupid enough to murder somebody in a remote country house with only four or five other potential suspects. Bayesian logic applies here: the significan

  • Evil scientists in the name of science!!! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by RicardoStaudt ( 848723 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @07:03AM (#14434523)
    The researchers found four genes that were more active in the strangled animals than those that had died suddenly.

    And guess who strangled the animals those death in order to do this research?
  • They missed the obvious mistake in this: The "Cause of Death" with these mice is not strangulation or decapitacion, but "bored, cruel scientists with too much time on their hands". Since in both cases the cause of death has been the same, the investigation turned out useless.
    • There are asphyxiations that provide little or no physical evidence on the body. Smothering someone with a pillow, for example. Now we know there is another way to confirm the cause of death, and it may even be useful in criminal investigations. Knowledge is never useless.

      Your sentiment however, is. Crying over dead lab mice? You must have very little to do with your time. I hear they sell rat poison in most hardware and department stores. Better get on that, we can't let the murder of these poor non-sentie

  • Thank God (Score:2, Insightful)

    by KrisCowboy ( 776288 )
    Well, working on mice is fine but what about the human subjects? These days there's a new group of people arguing that if something works on mice, it needn't necessarily work on humans - like mice developing new brain cells when injected with synthetic cannabinoids. I, for once, would be willing to be a guinea-pig if anyone wants to test the effects of pot on humans. Back to the topic, what still needs to be done is to prove the same theory for humans and let the forensics take over from there.

    • Re:Thank God (Score:2, Insightful)

      by CyBlue ( 701644 )
      Good point. Going along that thought, we already have plenty of humans laying around that have been strangled or decapitated. Why do we need to study mice?
  • Such a slaughter does not serve science, and hardly deserves being called science. No matter how 'small' the group might be.

    "Science sans conscience n'est que ruine de l'âme" -- Rabelais
    (Science without conscience is only ruin of the heart)
    • So says you, and you're an expert in the field because....?

      Just read the OP. It explains why there is value in killing these animals, however gruesome it might sound. Criminal forensics will benefit from having another tool at its disposal for determining cause of death, and such improved forensics may result in killers being convicted of their crimes rather than being allowed to kill again. Hence, the sacrifice of these mice may save human lives.

  • because no CS (grad/advanced undergrad) ever gets the job of killing mice for science. I had a friend who was a chem major and he was getting paid $10/hr to hit rats in the head with a piston then anesthetize them and decapitate them to evaluate their brain. I got to code a program that calculates the number of primes less than a certain number. Who is the winner in that contest....

  • PETA / lack of oxygen? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by seanduffy ( 930895 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @08:03AM (#14434697) Homepage
    wow, i have no idea how PETA has not FLIPPED. i have killed a lot of hamsters/mice/rats in my days working in a neuroendocrinology lab and we had to go through hell applying for/making sure our protocols for killing the animals were up to snuff with federal regulation. i wonder how they got permission for the strangulation. plus, it's a rediculous study anyway. what "genes" are they talking about? i assume that they are activated in response to a lack of oxygen because thats what the article stressed. in that case, they could probably just measure lactic acid (lactic acid is the product of an alternative pathway to make ATP when oxygen is not available), degredation products of lactic acid, or ph level in the cytoplasm of the animals cells (ph drops when lactic acid is produced). also, the RNA that they saw an increased transcription of would likeley degrade before any reasonable conclusions could be made. as a last note, if the genes they saw activated were from the pressure of the strangulation, this tells the forensic scientists nothing because the original goal is to determine if "whether someone died by strangulation or suffocation, rather than by some other means," especially in cases where there are no other physical clues. strangulation pressure always leaves a mark.

  • New SVU episode inspiration (Score:3, Funny)

    by digitaldc ( 879047 ) * on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @08:09AM (#14434715)
    Kazuya Ikematsu and his colleagues anaesthetized and then killed two small groups of mice, by either strangulation with a string, or by decapitation.

    This story will be 'ripped from the headlines' on the next episode of 'Law & Order: Small Victims Unit.'
  • They are killing mouse. I feel a small disturbance in the force.

    (anyone up for any THHTTG quotes?)
  • ...is science lab.

    science is all good, but somewhat this seems slightly sick :>

    Kazuya Ikematsu and his colleagues anesthetized and then killed two small groups of mice, by either strangulation with a string, or by decapitation.
  • depending on the method of slaughter...

  • Anesthesia's nice, but it's WAY less dramatic. (Score:3, Informative)

    by ScentCone ( 795499 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @09:12AM (#14434928)
    The test mice were all sound asleep when they met their ends, unlike this mouse [insurancejournal.com], who went out a la Peter Jackson's Denethor.

  • Sounds repulsive... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Junta ( 36770 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @09:16AM (#14434952)
    But is it any more cruel than the typical use of mice as snake food where they are fed live to a snake? Also undoubtedly would induce as much fear as strangulation would, if not more so since the snake situation is exacerbated by facing a natural predator. Personally, I couldn't do that, but it is a widespread accepted practice that seems not very different from this experiment.

    However, it does seem rather pointless, considering how specific the test is and it doesn't reflect how useful this would be in humans. I would think it easy to collect samples from cadavers with well known causes of death and test those. Maybe they need shortly before to compare against?

    • Re:Sounds repulsive... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by hey! ( 33014 )
      But is it any more cruel than the typical use of mice as snake food where they are fed live to a snake?

      Context is everything. It's cruel to the snake to let it starve to death; it is not necessarily cruel to a researcher to not let him perform an experiment.

      Arguably, these are both natural behaviors for our species: eating rodents for snakes and experimenting on them for humans. However, humans have choices in the matter, can consider future consequences, other alternative and weigh them. In fact I'd ar

      • Re:Sounds repulsive... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Junta ( 36770 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @11:12AM (#14435681)
        I think its interesting the inferred deferral of responsibility in the response to the snake feeding example.

        It's only natural for the snake to eat a mouse, but the point is the human is putting the mouse in the position of being eaten, knowing precisely what the consequence of putting that situation together, but since the final stroke is not done by their hands, they are less responsible, and therefore less cruel. If they had to hypothetically kill the mouse for the snake before feeding it, some may have more problems with doing that.

        Similarly, the average person eats meat, but wouldn't kill an animal and eat it because the experience seems horrific. Again, the actual burden of the act of killing is deferred, but the person benefits from and to some extent can be considered responsible for the act.

        It's fascinating how for a lot of people is a larger measure of cruelty is how dirty the person's hands directly get in the act versus how responsible they are for the act.

        Of course, I'm one of the people who eat meat but wouldn't kill an animal, but at least I recognize my psuedo-hypocrisy for what it is.
      • slightly OT, i guess, but i'm in a sharing kind of mood...

        Context is everything. It's cruel to the snake to let it starve to death; it is not necessarily cruel to a researcher to not let him perform an experiment.

        i'd go a step further. i used to have a ball python when i was in college... it wouldn't just be cruel to let him starve to death, it would also be cruel to deny him the stalk for food. sure, my observations hardly count as science, but... he was totally uninterested in pre-killed food... if

  • ...has determined the cause of death to be either rapid incineration or radiation exposure.

  • This is not the innovation it seems to be. For most causes of death there are precise enzymatic and cytological evidence (apart from the obvious macroscopic evidence). Tissues include some very specific cell lines which contain a series of isoenzymes specific for that cell line. For instance a cardiac infract increases the levels of creatine-kinase MB isoenzyme, whereas an ictus would not to the same extent. Furthermore, isoenzymes have different half-lives giving furhter insight to the timing of the events
  • "Strangle these animals so we can figure out how they died"
  • That way, they could scientifically justify choking the chicken.

    It makes sense.
  • I have a long list.

  • ...genes can predict the future? Does this mean that if we study genes in people at any age we'll know how they are going to die? That's freakin' scary! ;P
  • There are several companies marketing a chip where each square reacts with a gene or a marker part (unique characteristic subsection) of DNA. These dont have have to be too large, since theres only 30K human genes and 120K useful markers. You figure out what subset of genes is present or active by looking a pixel image of this chip, where the intensity patterns become a "fingerprint". These are currently being used to see how various human tissues express genes, and if diseases leave genetic fingerprints.

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