Determination of the suitability of agilent bioanalyzer 2100 for investigations into wildlife crimes: case studies

This article examines the use of chip electrophoresis in wildlife crime investigations through three mock case studies. Specifically, we analysed DNA extracted from the tanned hide of Panthera pardus, a species protected under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), at various stages of the tanning process (Case study #1). Tanned hides present a unique challenge due to the detrimental effects of tanning on DNA integrity, resulting in highly degraded DNA extracts. Therefore, assessing DNA integrity before performing standard DNA analyses is critical to conserving laboratory resources. One of the conventional methods for evaluating DNA integrity involves determining the degradation index using quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR). This study explored whether chip electrophoresis, a faster and simpler alternative to qPCR, could provide comparable assessments of DNA integrity. In addition, its applicability for use in established assays, such as the Triplex assay, which is used for rapidly classifying unknown biological material (Case study #2) and species identification based on mitochondrial DNA lenght polymorphism (Case study #3). The findings indicate that while chip electrophoresis is effective in established assays, it is unsuitable for assessing the quality of DNA extracted from tanned hides.