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Some Genes Remain Active After Death: Study
Some genes keep working after a person dies, researchers say.
They analyzed samples from a number of people within 24 hours after death and said their findings provide important data for other scientists and might lead to a new forensic tool for criminal investigations, BBC News reported.
The study was published in the journal Nature Communications.
It’s not clear why some genes remained active after death, but one possible explanation was offered by study author Roderic Guigo, a computational biologist at the Barcelona Institute for Science and Technology in Spain.
“I would guess that one of the major changes is due to the cessation of flow of blood, therefore I would say probably the main environmental change is hypoxia, the lack of oxygen, but I don’t have the proof for this,” Guigo told BBC News.
He said much more work is needed before this research might prove useful in criminal investigations.
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