Development of an Immuno-Magnetic Procedure for the Separation of Spermatozoa from Vaginal Epithelial Cells

The main goals of this research are to develop a simple, robust, cost and time efficient method for the separation of spermatozoa from vaginal epithelial cells and to disseminate the methods and results to the forensic science community. This research is aimed at the development of an immuno-magnetic technique for the separation of sperm cells from vaginal epithelial cells. A direct immuno-magnetic technique will be used for sperm cell capture. Seven Protein G- magnetic bead (New England Biolabs, Ipswich, MA)- anti-human sperm complexes will be evaluated. The new method devloped from this project will enhance the efficiency of crime laboratories by reducing the time required for the most time-consuming and labor-intensive step in the analysis of sexual assault swabs. ca/ncf