DNA fingerprinting: its application in forensic case work

Abstract

Forensic serology deals with cases of disputed paternity and criminal stains. The spectacular improvement using DNA-profiling is best demonstrated with cases of criminal stains where with the same ease as a suspect can be identified, an innocent person can be excluded. In cases with band-shifting, a statistical definition of a match applying Bayes theorem as a decision making tool seems mandatory since matching or non-matching cannot be treated as a binary event. Good postmortem DNA stability is found in brain cortex, lymph nodes and psoas muscle. DNA fingerprinting is also a perfect tool to investigate disputed identity of blood alcohol samples. In paternity cases, we recommend both multi locus and single locus probes in kinship cases, e.g. in mother-child-putative father cases as well as father-daughter and brother-sister incest cases, grandparent cases and two-men cases. For the biostatistical evaluation of SLP patterns the formal genetics for a system of multiple allelism is used and for multi locus probes the model of multiple diallelism is applicable.