Molecular pathology in forensic medicine--Introduction.

Techniques of molecular biology have improved diagnostic sensitivity, accuracy and validity in forensic medicine very much, especially in the field of identification (paternity testing, stain analysis). Since more than 10 years these techniques - meanwhile well established in clinical disciplines - are used also for other applications in forensic medicine: determination of cause and manner of death, tissue identification by mRNA and microRNA, examination of gene expression levels (survival time, time since death, cause of death), toxicogenetics.