Date of Award

1-1-2018

Language

English

Document Type

Master's Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

College/School/Department

Department of Chemistry

Content Description

1 online resource (iii, vii, 23 pages) : illustrations (some color)

Dissertation/Thesis Chair

Igor Lednev

Committee Members

Paul Toscano, Jan Halamek

Keywords

Chemistry, Forensic, Raman spectroscopy, Saliva, Body fluids, Mass spectrometry

Subject Categories

Chemistry | Food Science

Abstract

Traces of body fluids can be found at a crime scene. Being able to identify and differentiate the body fluids while preserving DNA is fundamentally important for forensic applications. Saliva is an important body fluid that can be found on bite marks, cigarette butts, and more, being an excellent source for DNA extraction. Current tests for saliva and other body fluids are destructive and body fluid specific, and are prone to false positives. Our laboratory has developed a universal method for identification of all main body fluids; saliva, semen, sweat, peripheral blood, and vaginal fluid, using Raman spectroscopy combined with chemometrics (Muro et al.)3. The objective of this study is to evaluate the developed method for potential false positives of saliva. The potential false positives chosen for this study include compounds, which result in false positive reaction for current biochemical tests or have a similar appearance to dry saliva. It was found that Raman spectroscopy was able to differentiate saliva from all tested samples effectively by both visual inspection of spectral data and using statistical analysis.

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