Forensic Context

A study in humans demonstrated that the mir-888 (hsa-miR-888-5p) is a semen-specific miRNA with high abundance and stable, concentrated distribution in normal semen, enabling discrimination from other body fluids with little sporadic crossover even in infertile samples and showing high sensitivity detectable with as low as 2.5pg total RNA [Tian et al. DOI:10.1016/j.fsigen.2017.12.010]. Subsequent research established a multi-class support vector machine (MSVM) classification model for forensic body fluid identification, where the mir-888 was selected as one of 12 key features for semen identification, as it enabled distinct and positive identification by being not expressed or expressed at very low levels in non-target body fluids, contributing to a model achieving 98% accuracy on an independent test set [Li et al. DOI:10.1016/j.fsigen.2024.103180]. A review of forensic miRNA applications notes that the mir-888 has been identified as a potential biomarker for semen identification, contributing to the confirmatory analysis of biological stains [Glynn DOI:10.1261/rna.072173.119].