Skip to main content
NCBI home page
American Journal of Human Genetics logoLink to American Journal of Human Genetics
. 1994 Sep;55(3):533–539.

A reassessment of frequency estimates of PvuII-generated VNTR profiles in a Finnish, an Italian, and a general U.S. Caucasian database: no evidence for ethnic subgroups affecting forensic estimates.

B Budowle 1, K L Monson 1, A M Giusti 1
PMCID: PMC1918421  PMID: 7915881

Abstract

Recently, Krane et al. addressed the effect of estimating various target DNA profile frequencies in Finnish, Italian, and general U.S. Caucasian databases. They observed that, when using an "inappropriate ethnic," or noncognate, database (e.g., a Finnish target profile frequency estimated in an Italian database, and vice versa), estimates were less common than when the target profile frequencies were estimated using their own ethnic, or cognate, database, and these estimates differed by more than one order of magnitude. These differences were attributed to the effects of subgroups. We demonstrate that the differences can be ascribed to statistical artifacts that induce large biases and correlations. Additionally, we show that the differences of estimates of any specific DNA profile frequency based on allelic size frequencies from different databases become smaller when the fixed-bin rather than a +/- 2.5% floating-bin approach is used.

Full text

PDF
533

Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

  1. Brookfield J. The effect of population subdivision on estimates of the likelihood ratio in criminal cases using single-locus DNA probes. Heredity (Edinb) 1992 Aug;69(Pt 2):97–100. doi: 10.1038/hdy.1992.101. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  2. Budowle B., Giusti A. M., Waye J. S., Baechtel F. S., Fourney R. M., Adams D. E., Presley L. A., Deadman H. A., Monson K. L. Fixed-bin analysis for statistical evaluation of continuous distributions of allelic data from VNTR loci, for use in forensic comparisons. Am J Hum Genet. 1991 May;48(5):841–855. [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  3. Budowle B., Monson K. L., Giusti A. M., Brown B. L. The assessment of frequency estimates of Hae III-generated VNTR profiles in various reference databases. J Forensic Sci. 1994 Mar;39(2):319–352. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  4. Cannings C., Edwards A. W. Expected genotypic frequencies in a small sample: deviation from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. Am J Hum Genet. 1969 May;21(3):245–247. [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  5. Chakraborty R., Jin L. Heterozygote deficiency, population substructure and their implications in DNA fingerprinting. Hum Genet. 1992 Jan;88(3):267–272. doi: 10.1007/BF00197257. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  6. Chakraborty R., Jin L., Zhong Y., Srinivasan M. R., Budowle B. On allele frequency computation from DNA typing data. Int J Legal Med. 1993;106(2):103–106. doi: 10.1007/BF01225049. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  7. Chakraborty R., Kidd K. K. The utility of DNA typing in forensic work. Science. 1991 Dec 20;254(5039):1735–1739. doi: 10.1126/science.1763323. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  8. Chakraborty R., Smouse P. E., Neel J. V. Population amalgamation and genetic variation: observations on artificially agglomerated tribal populations of Central and South America. Am J Hum Genet. 1988 Nov;43(5):709–725. [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  9. Devlin B., Risch N. Ethnic differentiation at VNTR loci, with special reference to forensic applications. Am J Hum Genet. 1992 Sep;51(3):534–548. [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  10. Evett I. W., Gill P. A discussion of the robustness of methods for assessing the evidential value of DNA single locus profiles in crime investigations. Electrophoresis. 1991 Feb-Mar;12(2-3):226–230. doi: 10.1002/elps.1150120220. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  11. Evett I. W., Pinchin R. DNA single locus profiles: tests for the robustness of statistical procedures within the context of forensic science. Int J Legal Med. 1991;104(5):267–272. doi: 10.1007/BF01369583. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  12. Excoffier L., Smouse P. E., Quattro J. M. Analysis of molecular variance inferred from metric distances among DNA haplotypes: application to human mitochondrial DNA restriction data. Genetics. 1992 Jun;131(2):479–491. doi: 10.1093/genetics/131.2.479. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  13. Hartl D. L., Lewontin R. C. DNA fingerprinting report. Science. 1993 Apr 23;260(5107):473–474. doi: 10.1126/science.8475378. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  14. Krane D. E., Allen R. W., Sawyer S. A., Petrov D. A., Hartl D. L. Genetic differences at four DNA typing loci in Finnish, Italian, and mixed Caucasian populations. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1992 Nov 15;89(22):10583–10587. doi: 10.1073/pnas.89.22.10583. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  15. Lander E. S. Research on DNA typing catching up with courtroom application. Am J Hum Genet. 1991 May;48(5):819–823. [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  16. Lewontin R. C., Hartl D. L. Population genetics in forensic DNA typing. Science. 1991 Dec 20;254(5039):1745–1750. doi: 10.1126/science.1845040. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  17. Monson K. L., Budowle B. A comparison of the fixed bin method with the floating bin and direct count methods: effect of VNTR profile frequency estimation and reference population. J Forensic Sci. 1993 Sep;38(5):1037–1050. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  18. Morton N. E., Collins A., Balazs I. Kinship bioassay on hypervariable loci in blacks and Caucasians. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1993 Mar 1;90(5):1892–1896. doi: 10.1073/pnas.90.5.1892. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  19. Morton N. E. Genetic structure of forensic populations. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1992 Apr 1;89(7):2556–2560. doi: 10.1073/pnas.89.7.2556. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  20. Risch N. J., Devlin B. On the probability of matching DNA fingerprints. Science. 1992 Feb 7;255(5045):717–720. doi: 10.1126/science.1738844. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  21. Weir B. S. Independence of VNTR alleles defined as fixed bins. Genetics. 1992 Apr;130(4):873–887. doi: 10.1093/genetics/130.4.873. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

Articles from American Journal of Human Genetics are provided here courtesy of American Society of Human Genetics

RESOURCES