Coomassie Brilliant Blue G-250 Dye: An Application for Forensic Fingerprint Analysis

• NCJ Number: 251976
• Journal: Analytical Chemistry Volume: 89 Issue: 7 Dated: 2017 Pages: 4314-4319
• Author(s): Erica Brunelle; Anh Minh Le; Crystal Huynh; Kelly Wingfield; Lenka Halámková; Juliana Agudelo; Jan Halámek
• Date Published: 2017
• Length: 6 pages
• Grant Number(s): 2016-DN-BX-0188
• Agencies: NIJ-Sponsored
• Publication Type: Research (Applied/Empirical)
• Award: Novel concept for fingerprint analysis

Annotation

This study differentiated between female fingerprints and male fingerprints, using the Bradford assay, which was developed specifically to aid in the transition from targeting large groups of amino acids, as demonstrated in the previous studies, to targeting only a single amino acid without compromising the intensity of the response and/or the ability to differentiate between two attributes.

Abstract

The Bradford reagent, comprised of the Coomassie Brilliant Blue G-250 dye, methanol, and phosphoric acid, has been traditionally used for quantifying proteins. Use of this reagent in the Bradford assay relies on the binding of the Coomassie Blue G-250 dye to proteins; however, the ability of the dye to react with a small group of amino acids (arginine, histidine, lysine, phenylalanine, tyrosine, and tryptophan) makes it a viable chemical assay for fingerprint analysis in order to identify the biological sex of the fingerprint originator. It is recognized that the identification of biological sex has been readily accomplished using two other methods; however, both of those systems are reliant upon a large group of amino acids, 23 to be precise. 1 figure (Publisher abstract modified)