Assessment of the effectiveness of human remains DNA typing: Analysis of 134 cases

Abstract Almost 10% of our casework involved DNA typing of human remains. In order to assess the efficiency of our protocol, results obtained in 134 cases were analyzed with regard to the success in DNA typing. In such cases an overall of 331 samples were processed, most of them corresponding to bones (68%), teeth (28%), and cartilage recovered from the bone joints (6%). After decalcification samples were subjected to DNA extraction with DNA Qiamp Minikit (Qiagen). DNA samples were quantified by real-time PCR and typed with AmpF l STR IdentiFiler PCR Amplification Kit (Applied Biosystems). AmpF l STR MiniFiler PCR Amplification Kit (Applied Biosystems) was used, to complete information in degraded samples. A complete DNA profile was achieved in 79% of the cases. The best performance was obtained with cartilage, from where 68% of the processed samples rendered a complete profile, whereas from the bone and teeth samples just almost 45% lead to a successful DNA typing.