Human hair is often found at crime scenes, persists for a long time, and is a valuable biological specimen in forensic investigations. Hair contains minimal intact nuclear DNA for the discrimination of individual identity. In such cases, proteomics evaluation of hair proteins could provide an attractive alternative for protein-based human identification. Therefore, this study adopted a proteomic approach to profile hair shafts from both males and females across different ethnic populations including Chinese, Indians, Malays, and Filipinos in their 20-80 s. First, hair proteins were extracted by different methods to adopt the most suitable protocol that produced the highest extraction efficiency based on most significant enrichment of keratins and keratin-associated proteins. Abundance of hair keratins including both types I and II, and keratin-associated proteins, estimated using label-free quantification, showed distinguishable profiles, and the possibilities of distinguishing individuals within each ethnic origin. Similarly, several protein candidates and their abundances could be used to distinguish sex and age of individuals. This study explored the possibility of utilizing hair proteomics phenotyping in forensic science to differentiate individuals across various ethnic groups, sex and age.
Keywords: Forensic science; Hair keratins; Hair shaft; Protein abundance; Proteomics.
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