A novel strategy for sibship determination in trio sibling model

Area of Science:

• Forensic Genetics
• Population Genetics
• Computational Biology

Background:

• Sibling testing is crucial in forensic investigations for identifying individuals.
• Traditional methods can be limited by sample availability and complexity.
• Virtual population simulation offers a powerful tool for evaluating genetic testing efficacy.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the effectiveness of sibling assignment using simulated populations based on short tandem repeat (STR) allele frequencies.
• To compare the efficacy of trio sibship testing with varying numbers of known relatives.

Main Methods:

• Generated virtual populations using 15 STR loci and 10,000 trio combinations.
• Assessed sibling identification accuracy by comparing true siblings and unrelated individuals in simulated scenarios (3S trio and 2S1U trio).

Main Results:

• Achieved 99.87% sensitivity and 99.88% specificity in sibling identification.
• Demonstrated an overall accuracy of 99.88% for correctly identifying siblings and non-siblings.
• Confirmed that using two known siblings yields higher accuracy than using one.

Conclusions:

• Trio sibship testing with two known siblings offers superior accuracy for forensic identification.
• Increasing the number of short tandem repeat (STR) loci enhances confidence in genetic identification.
• The developed simulation model can be applied to evaluate complex forensic cases involving multiple relatives.