Evaluation of the performance of Illumina's ForenSeq™ system on serially degraded samples

The use of next generation sequencing is increasing in the field of forensic genomics. This study assesses the performance of Illumina's MiSeq FGx System in the recovery of forensic genomic sequencing information from degraded and low-template DNA. The analysis involved a sensitivity study where a range of 1 ng to 5 pg of 2800M DNA was utilized. DNA was artificially and systematically degraded by incubating 2800 M DNA at 98°C for 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 120 and 180 min (resulting in degradation index values ranging from 0.837 to 232.247). The results revealed the detected allele call frequencies were greater than 80% when the DNA input was > = 50 pg or the degradation index was lower than 72.28. The allele balance was lower than 0.6 when the samples were heated for more than 120 min or the input quantity was less than 25 pg. Our data also indicated that the stutter type and ratio depend on the specific locus, while the sequencing run was the most significant factor in noise occurrence. The results of this study will help laboratories to develop workflows for the analysis of challenging samples using the ForenSeq FGx system.