The Effect of Bacteria vs Environment on Bone Diagenesis

10/12/2020

Caley Mein & Dr Anna Williams

Paige Tynan

12/12/2020 11:56:38 am

Hi Caley,

This is a really interesting piece of research. I noticed that one of your research questions was to determine if the changes in these parameters could aid in the estimation of postmortem interval. Can you expand on this point at all? Have you determined whether the parameters studied can aid in the estimation of postmortem interval?

Caley Mein

12/12/2020 01:19:34 pm

Hi Paige, thank you for the comments. From my reading, I saw that bioerosion leads to changes in the osteocyte lacunae (they can become mishapen) in short PMI's, I wondered if by quantifying these changes, we could assess whether these changes increased with increasing PMIs. I used ImageJ to analyse my microscopy images and to estimate the number of normal lacunae within the sample (it was a lot of counting!). We found that the number of normal lacunae decreased at a fairly steady rate as the PMI increased. More research needs to be done looking at this, to check whether it can be repeated using different subjects and I am doing my PhD looking at trauma and bone diagenesis using this counting technique.

Paige Tynan

12/12/2020 01:25:48 pm

Thank you for answering my questions! I am familiar with ImageJ and do not envy all that counting!

I look forward to hearing more about your work in the future!

Virtual Poster
Room 2020