Abstract
The discriminatory power of post-genotyping analyses, such as kinship or clustering analysis, is dependent on the amount of genetic information obtained from the DNA fragment/genotyping analysis. The number of microsatellite loci amplified in one multiplex is limited by the number of dyes and overlapping loci boundaries; requiring researchers to amplify replicate samples with 2 or more multiplexes in order to obtain a genotype for 12–15 loci. AFLP is another method that is limited by the number of dyes, often requiring multiple amplifications of replicate samples to obtain more complete results. Traditionally, researchers export the genotyping results into a spread sheet, manually combine the results for each individual and then import into a third software package for post-genotyping analysis. GeneMarker is highly accurate, user-friendly genotyping software that allows all of these steps to be done in one software package, avoiding potential errors from data transfer to different programs and decreasing the amount of time needed to process the results. The Merge Project tool automatically combines the results from replicate samples processed with different primer sets. Replicate animal (diploid) DNA samples were amplified with three different multiplexes, each multiplex provided information on 4–6 loci. The kinship analysis using the merged results provided a 1017 increase in statistical power with a range of 108 when 5 loci were used versus 1025 when 15 loci were used to determine potential relationship levels with identity by descent calculations. These same sample sets were used in clustering analysis to diagram dendrograms. The dendrogram based on a single multiplex resulted in three branches at a given Euclidian distance. In comparison, the dendrogram that was constructed using the merged results had eight branches at the same Euclidian distance.
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