Abstract

Miniplex has been designed to genotype degraded DNA samples when others commercial kits for human identification were unable to generate a complete genetic profile. Validation experiments following the Scientific Working Group on DNA Analysis Methods (SWGDAM) Guidelines were designed to evaluate the performance of Non-CODIS (NC) 01 and 02. This study describes an internal validation study of a set of six Miniplex loci D10S1248, D14S1434, D22S1045 (NC01) and D4S2364, D2S441, D1S1677 (NC02) to demonstrate their robustness in cases where current short tandem repeats genotyping usually fails. Allelic ladders were constructed with combined DNA templates from different human samples. Stutter averages, ranges, and standard deviations are shown. Peak height ratios in heterozygote loci were found to range from 0.57 to 1.00 when samples were amplified within the optimum DNA template. NC panels demonstrated the ability to produce full profiles from samples with lower DNA input (from 31.25pg to 1ng). No detectable DNA profiles to NC systems were observed in non-human mammalian or microorganism samples. Miniplexes NC01 and NC02 generated full profile in all degraded samples stored for up to 84 days under adverse environmental conditions, and they were able to produce profiles for the minor component in the mixture experiments. We also performed a casework sample study testing an old bone sample and noticed that the Miniplex systems were efficient.