Subscribe now

Life

Home |Life | News

Burn victim identified by maggots on body

WHEN Mexican police found a body in the woods it was burned beyond recognition, its DNA too damaged to be used for identification. Luckily, investigators were able to extract DNA from elsewhere - the digestive systems of maggots that had been feeding on the body. This is the first time that human DNA from a maggot gut has been analysed in this way to successfully identify a victim in a legal case.

Police suspected that the body was that of a woman who had been abducted 10 weeks earlier because they found her high-school graduation ring near the crime scene. But when forensic investigators failed to obtain a decent DNA sample from any of the body's tissues, they turned to a team of pathologists at the Autonomous University of Nuevo León in San Nicolás, Mexico.

María de Lourdes Chávez-Briones, Marta Ortega-Martínez and their colleagues dissected three maggot larvae collected from the body and extracted the contents of their gastrointestinal tracts. The human DNA they isolated allowed them to determine that the body was female. They then performed a paternity test between this DNA and that of the abducted woman's father. It revealed a 99.7 per cent chance that she was his daughter (Journal of Forensic Science, doi.org/jdv).

Although it is rare for a body to be so damaged that investigators would have to resort to this technique, there are other instances in which the process could be useful, says Jeffrey Wells of Florida International University in Miami. For instance, a maggot found in a car could be used as evidence that the vehicle had been used to transport a particular corpse.

The past decade has seen a lot of research on isolating human DNA from insects, says Martin Hall of the Natural History Museum in London, but it has only rarely been used in courts. Last year, DNA from the guts of maggots found on a headless corpse and on a head discovered nearby were used as evidence in a Chinese court that the body parts were from the same person (Tropical Biomedicine, vol 28, p 333).

Insects at crime scenes are too often ignored, says Hall. He hopes that the new paper will alert police and pathologists to their potential as crime-fighters.

Issue 2884 of New Scientist magazine
  • Subscribe to New Scientist and you'll get:
  • New Scientist magazine delivered every week
  • Unlimited access to all New Scientist online content -
    a benefit only available to subscribers
  • Great savings from the normal price
  • Subscribe now!
print
send

If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.

Have your say

Only subscribers may leave comments on this article. Please log in.

Only personal subscribers may leave comments on this article

Subscribe now to comment.

All comments should respect the New Scientist House Rules. If you think a particular comment breaks these rules then please use the "Report" link in that comment to report it to us.

If you are having a technical problem posting a comment, please contact technical support.

print
send
You are what they eat <i>(Image: Frank Greenaway/DK/Getty)</i>

You are what they eat (Image: Frank Greenaway/DK/Getty)

ADVERTISEMENT

HIV could be turning salmonella nastier

18:00 30 September 2012

More virulent pathogens may be evolving in people with depressed immune systems

Crustaceans hide their true age in stomach

10:00 30 September 2012

Counting the annual growth bands in the only hard part of a lobster that isn't moulted could help sustainable fishing practices

Jazz-singing robot could shed light on consciousness

12:31 27 September 2012

A robot that is being taught to sing duets with humans could reveal the nature of creativity, thought to be linked to consciousness

Zoologger: Spiny mice save their skin by shedding it

18:00 26 September 2012

Some lizards give predators the slip by shedding their tail, for example, but among mammals, only spiny mice have a similar strategy

Latest news

HIV could be turning salmonella nastier

18:00 30 September 2012

More virulent pathogens may be evolving in people with depressed immune systems

Cheap 'postage stamp' test monitors liver health

00:00 26 September 2012

A small and inexpensive piece of paper could provide developing nations with a quick and easy way to test blood for signs of liver damage

Atomic clocks get a grip on gravity

13:00 30 September 2012

The devices are accurate enough to give high-resolution views of our planet's density variations, and they're almost the right size too

Crustaceans hide their true age in stomach

10:00 30 September 2012

Counting the annual growth bands in the only hard part of a lobster that isn't moulted could help sustainable fishing practices

TWITTER

New Scientist is on Twitter

Get the latest from New Scientist: sign up to our Twitter feed

ADVERTISEMENT

© Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.