IDENTIFICATION AND QUANTITATION OF SOURCE FROM HEMOGLOBIN OF BLOOD AND BLOOD MIXTURES BY HIGH-PERFORMANCE LIQUID-CHROMATOGRAPHY

The described technique offers a sensitive and reproducible method for inferring the source of over 50 different animal species from bloodst ains and blood mixtures. Hemoglobins from each of the species were exa mined using reversed-phase high performance liquid chromatography (HPL C) in chromatographic times of less than 25 mins. The HPLC method comp lements and furthers current methodology for identification of species of origin. HPLC analysis is particularly well suited for the quantita tive analysis of blood and blood mixtures and is applicable to species for which antisera are unavailable. The sensitivity of the method (he moglobin amounts down to 1.2 mu g) lends itself to the analysis of blo od mixtures in which only a small percentage of the mixture represents blood from a given species. Such resolution and quantitation is appli cable to wildlife forensic casework.