**5. References**


[14] Kumar G.L., et al. (2009) Education Guide: Immunohistochemical Staining Methods. 5th Edition. Dako North America, Carpinteria, California

**Chapter 10** 

© 2012 Wang et al., licensee InTech. This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

**Immunohistochemistry of Neuronal Apoptosis** 

**in Fatal Traumas: The Contribution of Forensic** 

The most important part of forensic pathology is investigation of the cause and process of death, especially in violent and unexpected sudden deaths, which involve social and medicolegal issues of ultimate, personal and public concern. Forensic pathologists are expected to respond to social requests by reliable interpretation of these issues in routine casework on the basis of research activities to develop, improve and sophisticate the procedures as well as to establish an autopsy database within the framework of social and legal systems. Systematic investigations are needed for comprehensive assessment of pathological findings, making full use of the available procedures; while classical morphology remains a core procedure to investigate deaths in forensic pathology, a spectrum of ancillary procedures has been developed and incorporated to detail the pathology. In addition to postmortem biochemistry, experimental and practical investigations using molecular biological procedures in the context of forensic pathology (molecular forensic pathology) have suggested the usefulness of detecting dynamic functional changes involved in the dying process that cannot be detected by morphology (pathophysiological vital reactions) (Maeda et al., 2010; Maeda et al., 2011). These procedures may effectively be included in routine casework as part of forensic laboratory investigations (forensic molecular pathology). The purpose of forensic molecular pathology is to provide a general explanation of the process or pathophysiology of human death caused by insults involving forensic issues as well as the assessment of individual deaths on the basis of biological molecular evidence; in forensic investigation of death, the genetic background, dynamics of gene expression (up-/down-regulation), and vital phenomena, involving biological mediators and degenerative products, are detected by DNA analysis, relative quantification of mRNA transcripts using real-time reverse transcription-PCR (RT-

**Molecular Pathology in Medical Science** 

Qi Wang, Tomomi Michiue and Hitoshi Maeda

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/50225

**1. Introduction** 

