Rats Don't Always Mirror Humans in Forensic Science, Study Warns
A new study testing post-mortem interval biomarkers found that findings validated in controlled rat experiments don't reliably transfer to human cases. The asymmetric translation problem could affect forensic labs and medical examiners relying on animal-model research, signaling a need for more human-centered validation before deploying new time-of-death prediction tools.
Originaltitel: Human-to-Rat Validation of PMI Biomarkers: A Bidirectional Cross-Species Metabolomics Study Reveals Asymmetric Translation
= 0.10), underscoring limited direct rat-to-human translation. Overall, human-derived biomarkers validated robustly in the controlled rat model proved far more reliable. These findings highlight both the potential and limitations of cross-species PMI biomarker discovery and emphasize the need for improved metadata, especially temperature history, to advance PMI modeling in forensic practice.