Mitochondrial DNA in human identification: a review

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1 Instituto Nacional de Medicina Legal e Ciências Forenses, Lisbon, Portugal
2 Biologia, Universidade de Évora, Évora, Portugal
3 Instituto Universitário Egas Moniz (IUEM), Almada, Portugal
4 Research Institute for Medicines (iMed.ULisboa), Faculty of Pharmacy, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal
DOI
10.7287/peerj.preprints.27500v1
Published
Accepted
Subject Areas
Genetics, Legal Issues
Keywords
mtDNA, Human identification, Legal medicine, forensic biology
Copyright
© 2019 Amorim et al.
Licence
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
Cite this article
Amorim A, Fernandes T, Taveira N. 2019. Mitochondrial DNA in human identification: a review. PeerJ Preprints 7:e27500v1

Abstract

Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) presents several characteristics useful for forensic studies, especially related to the lack of recombination, to a high copy number, and to matrilineal inheritance. mtDNA typing based on sequences of the control region or full genomic sequences analysis is used to analyze a variety of forensicsamples such as old bones, teeth and hair, as well as other biological samples where the DNA content is low. Evaluation and reporting of the results requires careful consideration of biological issues as well as other issues such as nomenclature and reference population databases. In this work we review mitochondrial DNA profiling methods used for human identification and present their use in the main cases of human identification focusing on the most relevant issues for the forensic and medico-legal areas.

Author Comment

This is a submission to PeerJ for review.