The NBOMe compounds are highly potent 5HT2A receptor agonists and are also agonists at alpha-adrenergic receptors, which likely account for their serotonergic and sympathomimetic symptoms. The clinical testing of NBOMe drugs is not commonly available. Clinicians as well as laboratory staff play an important role in facilitating the detection of this group of potentially dangerous emerging drugs.
Shed human hair (lacking root nuclear DNA) frequently contributes important information to forensic investigations involving human identification. Detection of genetic variation observed in amino acid sequences of hair proteins provides a new suite of identity markers that augment microscopic hair analysis and mitochondrial DNA sequencing. In this study, a new method that completely dissolves single hairs using a combination of heat, ultrasonication, and surfactants was developed. Dissolved proteins were digested and genetically variant peptide (GVP) profiles were obtained for single hairs (25 mm) via high‐resolution nanoflow liquid chromatography‐based mass spectrometry and a novel exome‐driven bioinformatic approach. Overall, 6519 unique peptides were identified and a total of 57 GVPs were confirmed. Random match probabilities ranged between 2.6 × 10−2 and 6.0 × 10−9. The new bioinformatic strategy and ability to analyze GVPs in forensically relevant samples sizes demonstrate applicability of this approach to distinguish individuals in forensic contexts.
Human hair contains minimal intact nuclear DNA for human identification in forensic and archaeological applications. In contrast, proteins offer a pathway to exploit hair evidence for human identification owing to their persistence, abundance, and derivation from DNA. Individualizing single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are often conserved as single amino acid polymorphisms in genetically variant peptides (GVPs). Detection of GVP markers in the hair proteome via high-resolution tandem mass spectrometry permits inference of SNPs with known statistical probabilities. To adopt this approach for forensic investigations, hair proteomic variation and its effects on GVP identification must first be characterized. This research aimed to assess variation in single-inch head, arm, and pubic hair, and discover body location-invariant GVP markers to distinguish individuals. Comparison of protein profiles revealed greater body location-specific variation in keratin-associated proteins and intracellular proteins, allowing body location differentiation. However, robust GVP markers derive primarily from keratins that do not exhibit body location-specific differential expression, supporting GVP identification independence from hair proteomic variation at the various body locations. Further, pairwise comparisons of GVP profiles with 8 SNPs demonstrated greatest interindividual variation and high intraindividual consistency, enabling similar differentiative potential of individuals using single hairs irrespective of body location origin.
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