A study on the relationship between the degradation of tubulin in cardiac muscle and lung of rat and the postmortem interval / 中国法医学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To observe the degradation pattern of tubulin in the cardiac muscle and lung tissue of rats after death.Methods 24 young male Sprague-Dawley rats were divided into 6 groups averagely.After being killed by bleeding,the rats were kept in an artificial climate incubator;the experimental temperature was kept at 20℃ and humidity at 50%.Proteins in cardiac muscle and lung tissue were extracted and tubulin was then examined by Western blot.Thereafter,the semi-quantitative analysis of the Western blot images was performed.Results Tubulin can be detected in the normal cardiac muscle and lung tissue of rats.After 1d postmortem,the tubulin content in these tissues began to decline,and it might still be detected at 7d postmortem,but the tubulin content in lung decreased faster than that in cardiac muscle.A linear relationship between tubulin content in cardiac muscle and lung of rats and the postmortem interval was determined.The linear regression equations and coefficients for integral optic density in relation to PMI were y=-1726.1x+14083 with correlative coefficient r=0.9684 for cardiac muscle and y=-1439.89x+12041 with correlative coefficient r=0.9808 for lung,respectively.Conclusion The level of tubulin in cardiac muscle and lung tissue of rats varied with PMI and the time dependent degradation of this protein was potentially useful for the PMI estimation.