Mitochondrial DNA in human identification: a review
- 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
- 2019. Mitochondrial DNA in human identification: a review. PeerJ Preprints 7:e27500v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.27500v1
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.