Forensic Context

A study in humans demonstrated that the mir-10a is a semen-specific miRNA marker with high abundance in normal semen, but its expression is significantly down-regulated and dispersed in infertile semen samples, and an overlap in expression between normal semen and menstrual blood was observed [Tian et al. DOI:10.1016/j.fsigen.2017.12.010]. Research evaluating species specificity found that the mir-10a showed no expression in animal buccal swabs that fell within the human semen expression range, indicating specificity for human semen when tested against these animal materials [Peng et al. DOI:10.1016/j.forsciint.2019.04.036]. A study in rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) demonstrated that the mir-10a was utilized as a feature in a dose-prediction model developed from serum miRNA expression data at Day 21 following whole thorax irradiation [May et al. DOI:10.1038/s41598-022-16316-x].