Bloodstain Investigation Report

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The ability to determine source of a blood is important to serval fields of science, especially in forensic science (1, 2). Determining the origin of a bloodstain can be beneficial in investigations for wildlife crimes, animal cruelty cases, hit-and-run cases, and other cases as well (1, 2). It can be especially important in hit-and-run cases, because an individual may deny that they were in a vehicular accident where a human was hit (1). They even may lie by telling an investigator that they hit animal to account for the bloodstain and damage to their vehicle (1). As a result, it would be important to link evidence, a crime scene, and/or suspect together.
Before any determination of a source of a bloodstain, presumptive tests are performed on a stain that indicate if a stain is blood or not (1-3). Presumptive tests use chemical reactions with specific blood components (1-3). These tests are sensitive to components such as iron in hemoglobin (1, 3). As a result, presumptive test is unable to differentiate between possible sources of blood, such as human or animal blood (1, 3). Presumptive tests also …show more content…

Confirmatory test that can be used are: the Rapid Stain Identification^TM-Blood test, an enzyme immunoassay, the HemeSelect^TM test, the precipitin test, and various other tests as well (1, 3). But currently, the ability to determine if a bloodstain came for a human or animal source involves extracting nuclear DNA, or mitochondrial DNA from a blood sample (1). As a result, a DNA profiles are produced that have targeted species differentiations (1). These confirmatory tests are reliable, but they are destroy the blood samples, can have a multi-step process, can be time-consuming, and expensive (1, 3). As a result, scientists are researching other possible confirmatory tests that are less expensive, less time-consuming, and non-destructive

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