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- Title
AMINO ACID RACEMIZATION: AN AGE ESTIMATION TOOL USING HUMAN TOOTH A BRIEF INSIGHT.
- Authors
Narang, Ramandeep S.; Manchanda, Adesh S.; Singh, Balwinder; Sharma, Aakriti
- Abstract
Forensic odontology is a specialized field of dentistry which analyses dental evidence in the interest of justice. Age determination of unknown human bodies is important in the setting of a crime investigation or a mass disaster because the age at death, birth date and year of death as well as gender can guide investigators to the correct identity among a large number of possible matches. In forensic dentistry various craniofacial structures are subjected to investigation to arrive at conclusive data pertaining to age estimation. Teeth serve as valuable tool in this specialized era of forensic age diagnostics as they are least affected and destructed by the post-mortem changes. Chemical analysis of tooth using aspartic acid racemization has shown reproducible and precise results. Age-related changes that occur in proteins include oxidation, isomerization, and racemization. Among these changes, racemization is the first-order chemical reaction from L-form to D-form and it correlates highly with protein age which has been successful in forensic age estimation. This review aims to discuss the aspartic acid racemization as a biochronological tool for age assessment.
- Subjects
AMINO acids; RACEMIZATION; FORENSIC dentistry; TOOTH identification; ANALYTICAL chemistry
- Publication
Indian Journal of Comprehensive Dental Care (IJCDC), 2014, Vol 4, Issue 2, p480
- ISSN
2231-6973
- Publication type
Article