Evaluation of a co-extraction method for real-time PCR-based body fluid identification and DNA typing

Body fluid identification and individual identification are an important series of tests in usual criminal investigations. Recent reports have demonstrated a new approach using DNA/RNA co-extraction methods in which RNA for body fluid identification and DNA for short tandem repeat (STR) typing are extracted simultaneously from the same sample. This study evaluated a standard co-extraction kit, the AllPrep® DNA/RNA Mini Kit, in order to demonstrate the availability of the co-extraction procedure for those real-time polymerase chain reaction-based body fluid identification methods that we have validated previously. We demonstrated that the use of the Allprep Kit, for which we adjusted the lysis temperature to 56 °C to improve extraction efficiency, can simultaneously extract sufficient RNA and DNA for body fluid identification and STR analysis; however, a longer incubation at a high temperature slightly affected the ΔCt value of each target gene and appeared to be not as effective for DNA extraction from old stains as from 1-day-old stains. This method is promising for future forensic investigations because the use of this kit can reduce sample consumption for body fluid identification and DNA typing.