Forensic Context

A study in humans demonstrated that the miR-151a-3p was significantly more abundant in breast milk and the gastric content of breast-fed infants compared to formula-fed infants and adult gastric juice, identifying it as a potential biomarker for differentiating breast-feeding from formula-feeding in postmortem gastric content analysis [Kakimoto et al. DOI:10.1007/S00414-019-02226-7]. In a separate human study, serum exosomal miRNA sequencing revealed that the miR-151a-3p was upregulated in patients with sepsis and septic shock compared to healthy controls [Li et al. DOI:10.1038/s41598-025-89946-6]. A study in humans demonstrated that the miR-151a-3p is differentially expressed in the blood of monozygotic twins, showing higher expression in one twin of pair 1 and lower expression in one twin of pair 2, and was successfully validated by real-time PCR, indicating its potential as a molecular marker for twin discrimination [Fang et al. DOI:10.1016/j.fsigen.2018.09.011].