February 17, 2008 
The eyes have become a key to time detection of human birth and death, which is a great help in the world of forensics, but also in the continuation of the development of medicine and finding a cure for some disease…
Using C-14 dating and special proteins in the eye lens, the researchers from the University of Copenhagen and Aarhus can now establish, with relatively high precision, when a person is born. This represents a useful tool for forensics who can now set a date of birth of unidentified body which leaves consequences for subsequent medical and health researches. Research is published on the Internet in the journal Plos One on the January, 30th.
With eye lens that was made from transparent proteins called crystals, which are interconnected so compressed in a special form to behave like crystals, from conception to 1-2 years of life, cells in the lens product those crystalline proteines.Nevertheless, once when the organic structure is completed, the crystals of the lens remain essentially unchanged until the end of life. It is a fact that researchers can now use.
A small amount of carbon (C-12) in the carbon dioxide that is part of the atmosphere contains two extra neutrons and therefore is called Carbon-14 (C-14). This isotope is radioactive, but decays slowly and safely into nitrogen, which is normal in nature, so that this small carbon element is not harmful to humans, plants or animals.
At the same time, carbon is one of the main organic elements that are constantly moved around in the food chain. The same thing happens with tiny amounts of C-14 in the atmosphere. As long as the organism is a part of the food chain, a certain amount of C-14 in his cells remains unchanged and equal to C-14 of atmospheric structure. When organism dies, the amount of C-14 will slowly but surely fall during the period of a thousand years until it transformes into nitrogen. That is the key of Carbon 14 method known as C-14 dating, which scientists use to track up to 60.000 years old biological, archaeological findings.
Since the end of World War II until about 1960, powerful countries from the area of the Cold War, have done detonation bomb testings in the atmosphere. These detonations have affected the composition of the components of radioactive traces in the air and created what scientists called the C-14 bomb impulse. From the first detonation to the ban of nuclear testings, the amount of C-14 in the atmosphere is twice increased. From 1960 it has gradually reduced to the natural amounts.
The sudden impact made his mark both in the food chain, as well as in crystal eye lenses that absorb the increased amount of carbon through the food. Since the crystals remain unchanged once they are formed, they reflect the content of C-14 into the atmosphere in a moment when they were created, shortly after birth.
Using a nuclear reactor, physicists at the University of Aarhus can now establish the amount of C-14 in even one miligram of lens tissue and calculate the year of birth.
Assistant professor Niels Lynnerup from the Department of forensic science has developed a forensic method, together with the Department of Pathology and Ophthalmology Department of Physics and Astronomy of the University of Aarhus in Denmark.
Professor Lynnerup explains that this technique can have many other applications: “As other researchers have pointed out, we believe that C-14 dating of proteins and other molecules in the human body can be used to explore the time origin and regeneration of certain types of tissue.” This, for example, could be applied to attacked cancer tissue and cancer cells. By counting the amount of C-14 in these tissues we could know when the cancerous tissue has been created what would help us to better understand cancer.”