Genomic Tools to Reduce Error in PMI Estimates Derived from Entomological Evidence
Aaron M. Tarone, Christine Picard, Sing-Hoi Sze
Summary
The funded project has already begun to shed further light on the genetics of blow fly development. It has expanded our knowledge of the role of genetics in development time variation, showing that there is ample wild genetic variation that could potentially impact forensic predictions. Our heritability estimates provide an empirical estimate of the impact of genetic variation on development time variation. The molecular biology projects in this proposal will enable us to pursue candidate genes that are markers of development time variation, developmental progress, and thermal exposure. Such candidates, studied by us or others that follow up on our results, can be developed into components of phenotype prediction and age prediction kits similar to the IrisPlex kit for human eye color prediction. It should be noted that at the moment our analyses are preliminary. Subsequent publications with the data presented in this report may differ from future publications based on collection of further data, changes in parameter settings, differences in statistical tests performed, or choices in algorithms to apply to the data.