title: Forensic DNA challenges: replacing numbers with names of Fosse Ardeatine's victims.
abstract: The Fosse Ardeatine massacre was a mass execution carried out in Rome on March 24, 1944 by Nazi German occupation troops during the Second World War as a reprisal for a partisan attack conducted on the previous day in central Rome. The 335 civilians were taken to the "Cave Ardeatine" and they were shot. Only 323 corpses out of 335 have been identified. The aim of this work is the genetic and anthropological analysis of the remains exhumed from grave number 329 of Fosse Ardeatine's Shrine to assess their identity. So far, such remains have been supposed to belong to MM but mitochondrial analysis excluded a biological relationship to two living maternal relatives. Our analysis indicated that remains recovered in grave number 329 do not belong to MM. This result suggests that genetic analysis of the remains should be also applied to the other 12 unknown corpses to elucidate their identity.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biopathology and Diagnostic Imaging, Centre of Excellence for Genomic Risk Assessment in Multifactorial and Complex Diseases, School of Medicine, University of Tor Vergata, Rome, Italy.
authors.forename: Ilenia
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Pietrangeli
authors.forename: Vincenzo
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Caruso
authors.forename: Liana
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Veneziano
authors.forename: Aldo
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Spinella
authors.forename: Giovanni
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Arcudi
authors.forename: Emiliano
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Giardina
authors.forename: Giuseppe
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Novelli
mesh_terms: D001842:Bone and Bones / Q000737:chemistry; D022801:Complementarity Determining Regions; D019548:Crime Victims; D016172:DNA Fingerprinting / Q000379:methods*; D004272:DNA, Mitochondrial / Q000235:genetics*; D049249:Exhumation; D018732:Forensic Anthropology; D006708:Homicide; D006801:Humans; D007558:Italy; D018895:Microsatellite Repeats; D016133:Polymerase Chain Reaction; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA; D047789:World War II
chemical_list: D022801:Complementarity Determining Regions; D004272:DNA, Mitochondrial