Department of Forensic Medicine, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Korea. sdlee@snu.ac.kr
Department of Anatomy, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Korea.
Institute of Forensic Medicine, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Korea.
Department of Forensic Medicine, Cheju National University, Korea.

Commercial kits usually recommend certain range of the amount of DNA without PCR inhibitors for optimal results. If proper DNA is not used in STR amplification, undesirable results such as enhanced stutter effects, split peaks, allele dropout and poor peak balance could be shown. This phenomenon would happen more frequently in case of bone typing. Therefore, we checked effect of DNA concentration and PCR inhibitors on conventional STR typing results using QuantifilerTM Human DNA Quantification Kit. The 54 bone samples over a 60-year burial period were used in this study. In all samples, the DNA concentration ranged from 0.8 pg/ul to 748 pg/ul and Ct values of IPC that indicates residue of PCR inhibitors ranged from 26.69 to 35.59. The DNA concentration and the number of amplified loci showed positive correlation. The number of loci amplified using Minifiler kit was much more than using Y filer kit. Samples with high Ct value of IPC were not almost amplified with Y filer kit. These results suggested that QuantifilerTM Kit is useful to obtain information for DNA typing.

Key words : forensic science, quantification, bone, inhibition, commercial kit

Original article