Evangelou K, Angeli P, Polydorou A, Petropoulou T. Single-cell deoxyribonucleic acid typing for forensic mixtures and trace evidence: Opportunities, validation requirements, and reporting limits. World J Biol Chem 2026; 17(2): 121467 [DOI: 10.4331/wjbc.v17.i2.121467]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Kyriacos Evangelou, MD, Department of Minimally Invasive Colon and Rectal Surgery, The Euroclinic Hospital of Athens, 7-9 Athanasiadou & D. Soutsou Street, Athens 11521, Greece. evangeloukyriacos@gmail.com
Research Domain of This Article
Medicine, Legal
Article-Type of This Article
review-article
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This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
World J Biol Chem. Jun 5, 2026; 17(2): 121467 Published online Jun 5, 2026. doi: 10.4331/wjbc.v17.i2.121467
Single-cell deoxyribonucleic acid typing for forensic mixtures and trace evidence: Opportunities, validation requirements, and reporting limits
Kyriacos Evangelou, Paraskevi Angeli, Andreas Polydorou, Thalia Petropoulou
Kyriacos Evangelou, Andreas Polydorou, Thalia Petropoulou, Department of Minimally Invasive Colon and Rectal Surgery, The Euroclinic Hospital of Athens, Athens 11521, Greece
Kyriacos Evangelou, Andreas Polydorou, Thalia Petropoulou, Second Department of General Surgery, Aretaieion University Hospital, Athens 11528, Greece
Paraskevi Angeli, Department of Biology, University of Cyprus, Nicosia 1678, Cyprus
Paraskevi Angeli, Department of Neurogenetics, Cyprus Institute of Neurology and Genetics, Nicosia 1683, Cyprus
Author contributions: Evangelou K, Angeli P, Polydorou A, and Petropoulou T contributed to manuscript writing and editing; Polydorou A and Petropoulou T contributed to data collection; Evangelou K and Angeli P contributed to data analysis; Polydorou A and Petropoulou T contributed to conceptualization and supervision; and all authors have read and approved the final manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All authors declare that they have no conflict of interest to disclose.
Corresponding author: Kyriacos Evangelou, MD, Department of Minimally Invasive Colon and Rectal Surgery, The Euroclinic Hospital of Athens, 7-9 Athanasiadou & D. Soutsou Street, Athens 11521, Greece. evangeloukyriacos@gmail.com
Received: March 26, 2026 Revised: April 24, 2026 Accepted: May 9, 2026 Published online: June 5, 2026 Processing time: 71 Days and 14.2 Hours
Core Tip
Core Tip: Single-cell forensic deoxyribonucleic acid typing has moved beyond speculation, but present evidence supports targeted use only in validated niches. Its forensic value lies in reducing mixture complexity before computation, preserving cell-of-origin information, and rescuing contributor profiles that bulk analysis may not resolve. Its forensic risk lies in selective cell capture, single-template stochasticity, contamination at near-single-copy sensitivity, and the temptation to over-read cellular context as activity-level proof. The appropriate translational question is therefore not whether single-cell short tandem repeat typing works in principle, but which minimum validation thresholds and reporting limits are necessary before it enters accredited casework.
