Forensic Context

A study in humans demonstrated that the miR-24-3p exhibits significantly higher expression in bloodstains from young individuals compared to old individuals, enabling age range prediction for donors using a hairpin probe-triggered isothermal amplification (HPIA) method with 1 fg sensitivity [Hu et al. DOI:10.1016/j.microc.2025.114682]. In separate human skin research, the miR-24-3p was found to be downregulated in deep partial thickness burn skin four days post-injury compared to normal skin [Siu et al. DOI:10.1111/wrr.13100]. A study in mice demonstrated that fibroblast-derived exosomes containing the miR-24-3p promote wound angiogenesis by suppressing VHL in endothelial cells, thereby stabilizing HIF-1α and enhancing VEGF/VEGFR2 signaling, which rescues impaired neovascularization and accelerates healing in both acute and diabetic chronic wounds [Chen et al. DOI:10.1093/burnst/tkae071]. In a rat model, the miR-24-3p was identified as a potential forensic estimator for the early post-mortem interval, where its expression in skeletal muscle showed a significant and progressive upregulation over the first 24 hours post-mortem, and its fold change was successfully used in a predictive mixed effects model [Martínez-Rivera et al. DOI:10.7717/peerj.11102].