Abstracts Category : Other

Utilising antigen-antibody complexes to capture andenrich for sperm cells fractions in a mixed substrate

by Sean Hutchinson

Forensic DNA analysis on sexual assault evidence requires the separation of the victim and assailants DNA. For vaginal swabs where a large number of victims cells (epithelial cells) are present compared to the small number of the male assailants cells this can be problematic. There are a variety of methods that can achieve this separation and the most commonly used at present is differential lysis or variations upon this method. These methods tend to be long and tedious with results often relying on the operators expertise and experience. Immunomagnetic beads have been used in various other areas of the scientific community for separation of cells from various mixtures and the use of immunomagnetic beads for separation of sperm cells form cellular mixtures can potentially be used as an improvement upon current methods of separation. Antibodies have been tested for the use of forensically applied magnetic bead separation however there has been little testing beyond proof that it works. Optimisation of the procedure and testing on more realistic samples need to be conducted.Advisors/Committee Members: Chapman, Brendan, Turbett, Gavin.