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The purpose of this study was to evaluate the homogeneity of Polish populations with respect to STRs chosen as core markers of the Polish Forensic National DNA Intelligence Database, and to provide reference allele frequencies and to explore the genetic interrelationship between Poland and neighboring countries. The allele frequency distribution of 10 STRs included in the SGMplus kit was analyzed among 2176 unrelated individuals from 6 regional Polish populations and among 4321 individuals from Germany (three samples), Austria, The Netherlands, Sweden, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Belarus, Ukraine and the Russian Federation (six samples). The statistical approach consisted of AMOVA, calculation of pairwise Rst values and analysis by multidimensional scaling. We found homogeneity of present day Poland and consistent differences between Polish and German populations which contrasted with relative similarities between Russian and German populations. These discrepancies between genetic and geographic distances were confirmed by analysis of an independent data set on Y chromosome STRs. Migrations of Goths, Viking influences, German settlements in the region of Volga river and/or forced population resettlements and other events related to World War II are the historic events which might have caused these finding.

Allele frequencies of 15 short tandem repeat loci included in the AmpFlSTR Identifiler kit (Applied Biosystems) were obtained from a sample set of unrelated individuals living in Belarus (n=176). For all loci, no deviation from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium was found. Results were compared with data available for the Belarusian minority residing in northeastern Poland and for other Slavic populations. Statistically significant differences were observed between Belarusians and all compared populations. The values of heterozygosity, polymorphic information content (PIC), power of discrimination (PD), power of exclusion (PE), paternity index (PI) and matching probability (pM) were calculated.