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Volume 1, Issue 2, Pages 125-128 (June 2007)


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Relating two deep-rooted pedigrees from Central Germany by high-resolution Y-STR haplotyping

Manfred KayseraCorresponding Author Informationemail address, Mark Vermeulenab, Hans Knoblauchc, Herbert Schusterd, Michael Krawczake, Lutz Roewerf

Received 29 January 2007; accepted 3 February 2007. published online 13 March 2007.

Abstract 

Y-STR haplotyping is a powerful forensic and anthropological tool for identifying male lineages. We used high-resolution Y-STR haplotyping to evaluate the possibility of a blood relationship between two deep-rooted paternal genealogies with the same surname and originating from the same geographical region in Central Germany. One pedigree comprised 13 generations covering >450 years, the other comprised nine generations covering >300 years. Of the 68 loci tested, 64 (94%) consistently had the same allele in all males in the two pedigrees (except for some unambiguously sporadic mutations within pedigrees). Only four Y-STRs had a consistent allelic difference of exactly one repeat between the two pedigrees. These findings suggested that the two pedigrees were paternally related, and a conservative assessment taking average mutation rates and the available local haplotype frequencies for nine loci into account yielded a likelihood ratio of 8.2:1 in favour of this hypothesis. Our study thus highlights the power of Y-STR haplotyping to identify male lineages. It also shows that families can be linked to common ancestors on the basis of Y-STR data, even if these individuals lived several hundred years ago. However, the potential of Y-STR haplotyping could still not be fully exploited in our case due to a lack of appropriate population frequency data for all analysed Y-STR loci. This shortcoming makes a strong case for more comprehensive haplotype databases, including more samples and larger numbers of loci.

a Department of Forensic Molecular Biology, Erasmus MC-University Medical Center Rotterdam, The Netherlands

b Department of Biology, Netherlands Forensic Institute, The Hague, The Netherlands

c Vivantes Klinikum am Urban, Klinik für Psychiatrie und Psychotherapie, Berlin, Germany

d Infogen, Institut für Gesundheitsforschung und Gesundheitsmanagement, Berlin, Germany

e Institut für Medizinische Informatik und Statistik, Christian-Albrechts-Universität, Kiel, Germany

f Abteilung für Forensische Genetik, Institut für Rechtsmedizin, Charité Universitätsmedizin, Berlin, Germany

Corresponding Author InformationCorresponding author at: Department of Forensic Molecular Biology, Erasmus MC-University Medical Center Rotterdam, PO Box 2040, 3000 CA Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Tel.: +31 10 4638073; fax: +31 10 4089300.

PII: S1872-4973(07)00060-9

doi:10.1016/j.fsigen.2007.02.004


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