Mitochondrial DNA LINEAR ARRAY Evaluation

Participants: Margaret Kline, Janette Redman, Peter Vallone, David Duewer, and John Butler

Project Timeframe: July 2002-Oct 2003

Purpose: Beta-testing of HVI/HVII mtDNA LINEAR ARRAYs (Roche Applied Sciences, Indianapolis, IN), and automation of the process.

The LINEAR ARRAYS offer forensic laboratories doing human identification a rapid test for screening samples that may or may not require labor-intensive full sequencing.

Progress: Automation of LINEAR ARRAY processing was evaluated using a Tecan/Profiblot hybridization robot. Mitochondrial DNA mitotypes/haplotypes were established for 128 Hispanic, 252 African American, and 286 Caucasian population samples by automating the LINEAR ARRAY processing. These samples resulted in 282 different types of which 185 were unique (seen once in the NIST U.S. population samples). These unique samples represent 65.6% of the types seen and 27.8% of the people. Several groupings of samples seem to represent specific ethnic groups. The most common type, which consisted of 51 samples, was mitotype 1111111111 by LINEAR ARRAY analysis. After an additional SNP typing assay, the 51 samples could be sub-divided into 12 different groups with four samples being unique.

Publications Resulting from this Project:

Margaret Kline poster at 14th International Symposium on Human Identification (Phoenix, AZ), September 30-October 2, 2003, "Semi-Automation of mtDNA Arrays: Results from 666 Population Samples and Comparisons" [.pdf]

Kline, M.C., Vallone, P.M., Redman, J.W., Duewer, D.L., Calloway, C.D., and Butler, J.M. (2005) Mitochondrial DNA typing screens with control region and coding region SNPs. J. Forensic Sci. 50: 377-385.