Paternity Testing Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Paternity Testing, including details on accuracy, methods, procedure, dna testing.

Pros and cons in the use of SNPs in forensic kinship investigation: a comparative analysis with STRs.

Amorim A, Pereira L

IPATIMUP-Instituto de Patologia e Imunologia Molecular da Universidade do Porto, Rua Dr. Roberto Frias s/n, 4200-465 Porto, Portugal. aamorim@ipatimup.pt

Recent advances in single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) research have raised the possibility that these markers could replace the forensically established short tandem repeats (STRs). In this work, we compare STRs and SNPs applicability for kinship investigation in terms of expected informative content and probability of occurrence of "difficult cases" (when isolated Mendelian incompatibilities between alleged father and child are found). Since SNPs have a much lower mutation rate than STRs, these difficulties were expected to occur less frequently if SNPs were used instead of STRs. The purpose of this paper is to make some simulations allowing the estimation of how often such difficult cases are expected to occur using both types of markers and how serious can be their impact in routine work. Our results demonstrate that a battery based exclusively on SNPs matching the informative power of current STR kits would be prone, if applied to routine paternity investigation, to the occurrence of cases where the statistical evidence would be inconclusive. We infer that the introduction of a SNP based strategy, as a substitute to the now classical STR approach poses statistical problems that must be carefully evaluated.

Published 19 April 2005 in Forensic Sci Int, 150(1): 17-21.
Full-text of this article is available online (may require subscription).

© 2004-2008 Paternity Testing Research Today. All Rights Reserved.