Documentation of the Body Transformations During the Decomposition Process: from the Crime Scene to the Laboratory
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University of Huddersfield Repository Zurgani, Emad. K. A. Documentation of the Body Transformations during the Decomposition Process: From the Crime Scene to the Laboratory Original Citation Zurgani, Emad. K. A. (2018) Documentation of the Body Transformations during the Decomposition Process: From the Crime Scene to the Laboratory. Doctoral thesis, University of Huddersfield. This version is available at http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/id/eprint/34690/ The University Repository is a digital collection of the research output of the University, available on Open Access. Copyright and Moral Rights for the items on this site are retained by the individual author and/or other copyright owners. Users may access full items free of charge; copies of full text items generally can be reproduced, displayed or performed and given to third parties in any format or medium for personal research or study, educational or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge, provided: • The authors, title and full bibliographic details is credited in any copy; • A hyperlink and/or URL is included for the original metadata page; and • The content is not changed in any way. For more information, including our policy and submission procedure, please contact the Repository Team at: [email protected]. http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/ Documentation of the Body Transformations during the Decomposition Process: From the Crime Scene to the Laboratory A Thesis submitted to the University of Huddersfield in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Emad. K. A. Zurgani School of Applied Sciences Dec 2017 Copyright statement I. The author of this thesis (including any appendices and/or schedules to this thesis) owns any copyright in it (the “Copyright”) and s/he has given The University of Huddersfield the right to use such copyright for any administrative, promotional, educational and/or teaching purposes. II. Copies of this thesis, either in full or in extracts, may be made only in accordance with the regulations of the University Library. Details of these regulations may be obtained from the Librarian. This page must form part of any such copies made. III. The ownership of any patents, designs, trademarks and any and all other intellectual property rights except for the Copyright (the “Intellectual Property Rights”) and any reproductions of copyright works, for example graphs and tables (“Reproductions”), which may be described in this thesis, may not be owned by the author and may be owned by third parties. Such Intellectual Property Rights and Reproductions cannot and must not be made available for use without the prior written permission of the owner (s) of the relevant Intellectual Property Rights and/or Reproductions. Abstract Forensic science is defined as the application of scientific or technical practices to the recognition, collection, analysis, and interpretation of evidence for criminal and civil law or regulatory issues. A combination of computer science in the field of 3D reconstruction and molecular biology science and techniques were employed in this research aims to document and record a complete picture of the body decomposition process including the changes of the microbiome over the decomposition process. In this thesis, the possibility to reconstruct the crime scene and the decomposition process was investigated. In addition, a 3D model aiming to integrate the biological and thanatological information was generated. The possibility of utilising Autodesk 123D Catch software as a new tool for 3D reconstruction of a crime scene was thoroughly evaluated. First experiments demonstrated that the number of photos required to obtain the best result was specified to be from 20 to 30 photos as a minimum. In addition, significant experiments were performed in different conditions of sizes, locations, and different involved materials. The measurements were obtained from the models using the same software were compared with the real measurements of the tested objects. The result of the correlation between real and estimated measurements showed a very strong agreement ranging from 0.994 to 1.000. With reference to the documentation of the decomposition process, there are different factors, intrinsic and extrinsic, have been reported affecting the decomposition of a carrion/body. These factors mainly interact with the rates of the biological and chemical reaction happening after death. The biological reactions are mainly due to the activity of microorganism and insects. Pigs (Sus scrofa domesticus) were used as a model for human studies and the results obtained have been applied to other mammals without considering the effect of fur on the decomposition process and on the insect and microbial colonisation. In order to investigate this point, rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus) with and without fur were used in two sets of experiments at Huddersfield in summer 2014 and in spring 2015. The results obtained in this study showed a similarity of the decomposition stages between animals with and without fur. However, the decomposition process was faster during the summer due to the fast of insect colonisation and activity. In addition, the entomological data collected during the summer and spring experiments were demonstrated that the same taxa nearly were present in both seasons, except Hydrotaea (Diptera, Muscidae), which was i presented only in the summer experiment, moreover, only one sample of Lucilia sericata (Calliphoridae) was detected in the spring season. Differences in colonisation time were observed only in spring experiment; animals without fur were colonised two days before animals with fur. The season could have affected the insect’s activity and the spread of the decomposition volatiles. The microbial communities during the decomposition process were investigated using BIOLOG EcoPlate™ and the hypervariable V1-3 region of 16S rRNA gene was used for their molecular identification based on pyrosequencing. Eurofins Genomic Operon using 454-GS Junior pyrosequencing platform (Roche) carried out these analyses. The functional diversity of the bacterial communities on all carcasses samples showed a considerable variability depending on the stage of the decomposition and the sampling region (Oral cavity, skin and interface-sand-carrion) in both seasons. Furthermore, over the molecular analyses of bacterial communities at the phylum level, four main phyla of bacteria were detected among analysed carrion during the decomposition process. These phyla were changed significantly during the stages of the decomposition and between sampling regions. While no difference was observed due to presence or absence of fur. On the other hand, the analysis at the family level was able to highlight differences at the temporal scale but as well as carrion with and without fur. The statistical analysis results showed a significant difference in the bacterial community family distribution among the presence of fur and among the decomposition stages, with significant differences among sampling regions and seasons. ii Analysis performed in this thesis iii Acknowledgements I would like to give my special thanks to all who are in one way or another, had helped me finished my research: - My supervisor, Dr Stefano Vanin, for his guidance and persistent help; for sharing with me his expertise and research insights. - My family: parents, wife, brothers and sisters for their love and their support continuously in spite of the far distance; and our Almighty God for giving me the strength to face all the challenges in my life and finish this important step. - All my friends and Huddersfield University staff for their help during the research period. - Finally, I would like to thank Libyan government for funding my research in this difficult situation. EMAD. K. ZURGANI iv Table of Contents Abstract ..................................................................................................................................... i Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................. iv Table of Contents ..................................................................................................................... v List of Figures ........................................................................................................................ xii List of Tables .......................................................................................................................... xv List of Abbreviations ........................................................................................................... xvii 1. Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Forensic Sciences ............................................................................................................. 1 1.1.1 The Importance of Forensic Sciences ....................................................................... 2 1.1.2 Definition of Crime ................................................................................................... 4 1.1.3 Crime Scene .............................................................................................................. 4 1.1.4 Evidence .................................................................................................................... 5 1.1.4.1 Forensic Evidence..............................................................................................