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Published on: July 11, 2016
Routine forensic use of the mitochondrial 12S ribosomal RNA gene for species identification
Terry Melton1, Charity Holland
1Mitotyping Technologies, 2565 Park Center Boulevard, Suite 200, State College, PA 16801, USA. twm107@mitotyping.com
Abstract:
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.
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