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Routine Forensic Use of the Mitochondrial 12S Ribosomal RNA Gene for Species Identification
Author(s) -
Melton Terry,
Holland Charity
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
journal of forensic sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.715
H-Index - 96
eISSN - 1556-4029
pISSN - 0022-1198
DOI - 10.1111/j.1556-4029.2007.00553.x
Subject(s) - mitochondrial dna , biology , ribosomal rna , genetics , base pair , mt rnr1 , computational biology , forensic science , species identification , rna , gene
Since July 2004, Mitotyping Technologies has been amplifying and sequencing a approximately 150 base pair fragment of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) that codes for 12S ribosomal RNA, to identify the species origin of nonhuman casework samples. The approximately 100 base pair sequence product is searched at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/BLAST and the species match is reported. The use of this assay has halved the number of samples for which no mtDNA results are obtained and is especially useful on hairs and degraded samples. The availability of species determination may aid forensic investigators in opening or closing off lines of inquiry where a highly probative but challenging sample has been collected.