Dinucleotide repeat polymorphism at the apolipoprotein AII locus--phenotyping from peripheral blood and hair

The genomes of eukaryotes including humans contain very short simple sequence repeats such as (dA-dC)n and (dG-dT)n. Recently, these repeats have been reported to exhibit marked length polymorphism due to wide variation in their reiteration numbers. We report here dinucleotide repeat polymorphism at the apolipoprotein AII locus in Japanese subjects. The informativeness in Japanese was as high as in Caucasians (PIC value and heterozygosity of 0.67 and 0.72, respectively), but their allele frequencies were different with statistical significance. We also discuss the advantages of using dinucleotide repeat polymorphisms in forensic science, demonstrating determination of phenotype from not only a single hair root but also a short hair shaft.