Evaluation of the RapidHIT™ 200 System: A comparative study of its performance with Maxwell(®) DNA IQ™/Identifiler(®)...

RapidHIT(™) System is a rapid DNA instrument that is capable of processing forensic samples from extraction through to capillary electrophoresis and profile generation within two hours. Evaluation of the RapidHIT(™) 200 System was conducted to examine several key performance indicators of the instrument, including reproducibility, contamination, sensitivity, versatility and the possibility of sample re-extraction. Results indicated that the RapidHIT(™) 200 System was capable of generating high quality DNA profiles which were comparable to those from the standard protocol comprising of Maxwell(®) 16 DNA IQ(™) System, Identifiler(®) Plus and ABI 3500xL. No contamination was detected during the studies. Results also showed that the instrument was able to generate DNA profiles from samples containing lower amounts of DNA (0.5 μl of blood) albeit with more allele and locus dropouts when compared to the standard protocol. The ability to process blood swabs, blood-stained FTA punches, semen swabs, buccal swabs, product of conception (POC), bone marrow, fingernail clippings and cigarette butts at a good success rate indicated the robustness and versatility of the RapidHIT(™) 200 System. Furthermore, additional alleles could be recovered via re-analysis of the failed samples using the standard protocol. In summary, our results showed that the RapidHIT(™) 200 System was able to process casework samples for the purpose of providing rapid intelligence through DNA database searches and reference matching. Confirmative DNA results can be obtained through either concurrent processing of duplicate samples via standard protocol or re-extraction of samples retrieved from the RapidHIT(™) sample cartridge.