A new approach to amino acid racemization in enamel: testing of a less destructive sampling methodology

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

Aspartic acid racemization has been found to be an accurate measure of age at death for recent forensic material. This paper examines the practicality of using acid etching of the tooth surface to extract amino acids from the enamel for racemization analysis. By serial etching of the tooth and contamination of the teeth with bovine serum albumin prior to etching, the ability of etching to remove contamination was assessed. The destructiveness of the method was visualized and quantified using micro-computed tomography (micro-CT). By bleaching the teeth and by deeper etching it was possible to obtain more consistent values. While etching had little effect on the enamel at the macroscale, it did have an impact at the microscale. The quantities of enamel removed varied depending upon the tooth morphology, but were not large. Acid etching of enamel thus appears to be a promising new method for extracting proteins for amino acid racemization age estimation noninvasively.

Original languageEnglish
JournalJournal of Forensic Sciences
Volume53
Issue number4
Pages (from-to)910-916
Number of pages7
ISSN0022-1198
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2008
Externally publishedYes

    Research areas

  • Acid etching, Age estimation, Amino acid racemization, Contamination, Enamel, Forensic anthropology, Forensic science

ID: 229399070