Estimating the number of contributors to a DNA profile
Journal article, 2003

The broad topic of this paper is the evaluation of DNA evidence in criminal cases. More specifically, we deal with mixture evidence which refers to cases where there are, or could be, several contributors to a biological stain based on, e.g., blood or semen. The present paper adresses DNA mixtures based on single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers, i.e., diallelic markers. Based on STR analysis, it is in most cases easy to identify the presence of a mixture since three or four bands will show up with a high probability for at least one locus. Obviously, this will not be the case for diallelic markers and interpreting mixtures will be a great challenge. We address this problem by first approaching the more general problem of estimating the number of contributors to a stain. In addition we discuss how the markers should be selected and how many are required.

Author

Thore Egeland

Ingvild Dalen

Petter Mostad

Chalmers, Department of Mathematical Statistics

University of Gothenburg

International Journal of Legal Medicine

Vol. 117 5 271-275

Areas of Advance

Life Science Engineering (2010-2018)

Subject Categories

Probability Theory and Statistics

More information

Created

10/7/2017