Abstract
Nuclear DNA-profiling from human hairs is a well-known technique in forensic investigations,
but its success rate is quite low with some hair types. As nuclear DNA (nuDNA) extracted
from telogen hair roots is in short supply and is often degraded, a simple and effective
method of estimating the number of nuclear DNAs in telogen roots has been developed.
DAPI, a fluorescent, non-destructive DNA stain, allows the visualization of “nuclei”
(DAPI-positive spots the shape and size of the human follicular cell nuclei) and does
not interfere with subsequent PCR analyses. We stained 3242 telogen roots from 27
donors. Surprisingly, of the 2572 club roots without any soft tissue remnants 11%
contained visible “nuclei” and 3.3% even contained many. At the same time 57% of the
670 telogen roots with soft tissue remnants did not show any fluorescent “nuclei”.
We analysed the STR-profile of some of the roots selected by the DAPI screening, i.e.
132 telogen roots without soft tissue remnants, with a success rate of 79%. Our proposed
screening method allows the DNA laboratory to analyse nuclear DNA only in the most
promising hair roots.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: October 17, 2008
Accepted:
August 27,
2008
Received in revised form:
July 29,
2008
Received:
January 22,
2008
Identification
Copyright
© 2008 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
