Dental age estimation using amino acid racemization

Amino Acid Racemization

Application of amino acid racemization in enamel to the estimation of the age of human teeth

Estimation of age-at-death for skeletonised forensic remains is one of the most significant problems in forensic anthropology. The majority of existing morphological and histological techniques are highly inaccurate, and show a bias towards underestimating the age of older individuals. One technique which has been successful in forensic age estimation is amino acid racemization in dentine. Howe...

Amino acid racemization in Pseudomonas putida KT2440.

D-Amino acids have been shown to play an increasingly diverse role in bacterial physiology, yet much remains to be learned about their synthesis and catabolism. Here we used the model soil- and rhizosphere-dwelling organism Pseudomonas putida KT2440 to elaborate on the genomics and enzymology of d-amino acid metabolism. P. putida KT2440 catabolized the d-stereoisomers of lysine, phenylalanine, ...

Age Estimation for Dental Patients Using Orthopantomographs

OBJECTIVES The aim of this study was to conduct age estimates for dental patients using orthopantomographs (OPGs). The OPGs were selected by an independent author with respect to criteria and evaluated by two independent dentists. The results were compared to chronologic ages. The reliability of the estimates, concurrently made by the two independent dentists using OPGs, was also evaluated. M...

Racemization of Meteoritic Amino Acids

Meteorites may have contributed amino acids to the prebiotic Earth, affecting the global ratio of right-handed to left-handed (D/ L) molecules. We calculate D/ L ratios for seven biological, α-hydrogen, protein amino acids over a variety of plausible parent body thermal histories, based on meteorite evidence and asteroid modeling. We show that amino acids in meteorites do not necessarily underg...