A solution for the rare type match problem when using the DIP-STR marker system

The rare type match problem is an evaluative challenging situation in which the analysis of a DNA profile reveals the presence of (at least) one allele which is not contained in the reference database. This situation is challenging because an estimate for the frequency of occurrence of the profile in a given population needs sophisticated evaluative procedures. The rare type match problem is very common when the DIP-STR marker system, which has proven itself very useful for dealing with unbalanced DNA mixtures, is used, essentially due to the limited size of the available database. The object-oriented Bayesian network proposed in Cereda et al. [7] to assess the value of the evidence for general scenarios, was not designed to deal with this particular situation. In this paper, the model is extended and partially modified to be able to calculate the full Bayesian likelihood ratio in presence of any (observed and not yet observed) allele of a given profile. The method is based on the approach developed in Cereda [5] for Y-STR data. Alternative solutions, such as the plug-in approximation and an empirical Bayesian methodology are also proposed and compared with the results obtained with the full Bayesian approach.