Development of a 40 Linked Autosomal STRs Panel Using Massively Parallel Sequencing

Abstract Short tandem repeats (STRs) due to their polymorphic nature are well-studied and routinely used in forensic DNA typing. If we take linkage and recombination fraction into consideration, linked autosomal STRs (LAuSTRs) can provide more meaningful information than independent markers in some complex kinship analysis. However, only independent STR loci have been included in most commercial STR kits. In this study, 11 closely linked groups included 40 LAuSTRs loci were selected from Rutgers Map, which were located on different chromosome, including two groups of five loci, three groups of four loci and the remaining six groups of three loci, respectively. Multiplex amplification technologies have used to develop a panel including the selected 40 LAuSTRs, which amplicons range from 153 bp to 256 bp sequencing by Illumina MiSeq FGx sequencing platform. A population study with 102 unrelated individual from northern Han of China was performed using this panel. The corresponding allelic frequencies ranged from 0.005 to 0.589. Expected heterozygosity, polymorphic information content, power of discrimination and power of exclusion of the 40 STR loci were from 0.656 to 0.878, 0.592 to 0.861, 0.653 to 0.878 and 0.393 to 0.745, respectively. These results stated that the LAuSTRs panel developed by our study may be a meaningful tool for complex kinship analysis.