Rapidly mutating Y-STRs population data in the population of Serbia and haplotype probability assessment for forensic purposes

Abstract Recent research with Rapidly Mutating Y-STRs (RM Y-STRs) have shown that these loci provide substantially higher haplotype diversity and haplotype discrimination capacity in worldwide populations when compared with the Y-STRs commonly used in genetic forensics. The aim of this study was to develop an allelic frequency database for the population of Serbia in order to evaluate the resolution power of 13 RM Y-STRs. A total of 279 unrelated males from the population of Serbia were typed with 13 RM Y-STRs loci: DYF387S1, DYF399S1, DYF403S1a/b, DYF404S1, DYS449, DYS518, DYS526a/b, DYS547, DYS570, DYS576, DYS612, DYS626 and DYS627. A high Y-STR haplotype diversity was found (0.999768) in our samples. As expected, the RM Y-STR loci showed high genetics diversity (GD) values (>0.73) in the Serbian population. The highest GD was observed for the locus DYF399S1 (0.991), followed by loci DYF403S1a (0.976), DYF387S1 (0.907) and DYF404S1 (0.899). Based on the results of this study, the RM Y-STR loci showed remarkable haplotype resolution power in the population of Serbia, high genetics diversity and, therefore, demonstrating their usefulness in forensic identification cases.