title: Full siblings impersonating parent/child prove most difficult to discredit with DNA profiling alone.
abstract: DNA profiling is currently the most widely used method for parentage verification, although many forms of it have limitations of some sort. In this paper, a general formula is derived to depict a simple relationship between the probability that a random man and the probably that a male relative of the child, other than the child's father, is excluded from paternity, when the phenotype of the child's mother is unavailable. With this, the possible limitations of a finite set of STR loci in excluding close relatives of the child from paternity are illustrated. Genetically, among the commonly encountered biologic relationships, to exclude a full sibling of the child from paternity if they pose themselves as father and child remains the most difficult.
authors.affiliation: Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong, China. wingfung@hku.hk
authors.forename: Wing K
authors.initials: WK
authors.lastname: Fung
authors.forename: Dart-Man
authors.initials: DM
authors.lastname: Wong
authors.forename: Yue-Qing
authors.initials: YQ
authors.lastname: Hu
mesh_terms: D002681:China; D016172:DNA Fingerprinting; D006801:Humans; D008957:Models, Genetic; D009679:Nuclear Family; D010290:Parents; D010334:Paternity; D035781:Siblings