ISSN: 0022-1198
CODEN: JFSCA
Page Count: 9

The Effect of Ethnic and Racial Population Substructuring on the Estimation of Multi-Locus Fixed-Bin VNTR RFLP Genotype Probabilities
Houlihan, BT
Senior forensic scientists and forensic scientist III, Forensic Science Services, CA

Buse, EL
Senior forensic scientists and forensic scientist III, Forensic Science Services, CA

Hartmann, JM
Senior forensic scientists and forensic scientist III, Forensic Science Services, CA

Keister, RS
Senior forensic scientists and forensic scientist III, Forensic Science Services, CA

(Received 15 June 1993; accepted 9 August 1996)

Abstract

Four East Asian ethnic and four racial VNTR RFLP Southern California databases were used to determine the impact of population substructure on fixed-bin genotype probability estimates. Two calculations were used for population-level probabilities: Stratified sampling, which takes substructuring into account, and pooling, which ignores it. Using 1000 four-locus genotypes, the relative difference between probabilities calculated with the stratified and the pooled methods did not exceed one order of magnitude out of about 11 orders of magnitude for East-Asian racial genotypes. Pooled estimates differed from cognate ethnic values by less than one order of magnitude out of about six. These findings suggest substructuring of races by major ethnic groups does not lead to large errors. Racial genotype probability variances were on average about twice the ethnic variances. Multi-racial total population probabilities calculated by the pooled and stratified methods differed by less than one order of magnitude out of five.

Keywords:
forensic science, DNA typing, restriction fragment length polymorphism, variable number of tandem reports, genotype, population genetics, population substructure

Paper ID: JFS14103J
DOI: 10.1520/JFS14103J
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