Sex identification from exfoliated primary teeth--a PCR study

Teeth endure postmortem degradation and extreme changes in ambient temperature and pressure better than most human tissues. In the present day scenario the growing number of crime against children in the form of battering, physical/sexual abuse, abduction and kidnapping, the use of exfoliated primary teeth, become many times the only evidence available at the crime scene. Despite exposure of the body to burial, mutilation, explosion or incineration, it is usually possible to extract DNA from pulp tissue of tooth with sufficient quality and quantity. Hence the present study was undertaken to find out the sex of a child from exfoliated/extracted deciduous teeth using a Polymerase Chain reaction (PCR) based analysis. Tooth samples were stored in room temperature after double coding for various periods. Dental pulp tissue was collected from each sample and DNA was isolated by proteinase-k digestion and phenol chloroform extraction methods. PCR amplification was done with two sets of oligonucleiotide primers. Amplification of X (131bp) and Y-specific sequences (172bp) in males and that of the X-specific sequence in females was observed and compared with the template DNA showing male and female controls. Determination of sexes of all freshly collected samples within 24 hours and after 1 month of extraction respectively gave 100% result. However, PCR was not found to be an effective method for sex determination after 6 months post extraction.