Using total <scp>RNA</scp> quality metrics for time since deposition estimates in degrading bloodstains
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract The physicochemical changes occurring in biomolecules in degrading bloodstains can be used to approximate the time since deposition (TSD) of bloodstains. This would provide forensic scientists with critical information regarding the timeline of the events involving bloodshed. Our study aims to quantify the timewise degradation trends and temperature dependence found in total RNA from bloodstains without the use of amplification, expanding the scope of the RNA TSD research which has traditionally targeted mRNA and miRNA. Bovine blood with ACD‐A anticoagulant was deposited and stored in plastic microcentrifuge tubes at 21 or 4°C and tested over different timepoints spanning 1 week. Total RNA was extracted from each sample and analyzed using automated high sensitivity gel electrophoresis. Nine RNA metrics were visually assessed and quantified using linear and mixed models. The RNA Integrity Number equivalent (RINe) and DV200 were not influenced by the addition of anticoagulant and demonstrated strong negative trends over time. The RINe model fit was high ( R 2 = 0.60), and while including the biological replicate as a random effect increased the fit for all RNA metrics, no significant differences were found between biological replicates stored at the same temperature for the RINe and DV200. This suggests that these standardized metrics can be directly compared between scenarios and individuals, with DV200 having an inflection point at approximately 28 h. This study provides a novel approach for blood TSD research, revealing metrics that are not affected by inter‐individual variation, and improving our understanding of the rapid RNA degradation occurring in bloodstains.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".