title: Degradation in forensic trace DNA samples explored by massively parallel sequencing.
abstract: Routine forensic analysis using STRs will fail if the DNA is too degraded. The DNA degradation process in biological stain material is not well understood. In this study we sequenced old semen and blood stains by massively parallel sequencing. The sequence data coverage was used to measure degradation across the genome. The results supported the contention that degradation is uniform across the genome, showing no evidence of regions with increased or decreased resistance towards degradation. Thus the lack of genetic regions robust to degradation removes the possibility of using such regions to further optimize analysis performance for degraded DNA.
authors.affiliation: Department of Forensic Biology, Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Oslo, Norway; Department of Forensic Medicine, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway. Electronic address: kjeirik@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Eirik Nataas
authors.initials: EN
authors.lastname: Hanssen
authors.affiliation: Department of Medical Genetics, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway; Department of Medical Genetics, Oslo University Hospital, Oslo, Norway.
authors.forename: Robert
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Lyle
authors.affiliation: Department of Forensic Biology, Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Oslo, Norway; IKBM, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Aas, Norway.
authors.forename: Thore
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Egeland
authors.affiliation: Department of Forensic Biology, Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Oslo, Norway; Department of Forensic Medicine, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway.
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Gill
mesh_terms: D001774:Blood Chemical Analysis; D053836:DNA Degradation, Necrotic; D016172:DNA Fingerprinting; D015894:Genome, Human; D059014:High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing; D006801:Humans; D012661:Semen / Q000737:chemistry
keywords: DNA degradation; Massively parallel sequencing