Genetic variation of twenty autosomal STR loci and evaluate the importance of these loci for forensic genetic purposes

The aim of this study was of twofold. One was to determine the genetic structure of Iraq population and the second objective of the study was to evaluate the importance of these loci for forensic genetic purposes. FTA® Technology (FTA™ paper DNA extraction) utilized to extract DNA. Twenty (20) STR loci and Amelogenin), including D3S1358, D13S317, Penta E, D16S539, D18S51, D2S1338, CSF1PO, Penta D, THO1, vWA, D21S11, D7S820, TPOX, D8S1179, FGA, D2S1338, D5S818, D6S1043, D12S391, D19S433 and Amelogenin amplified by using power plex21® kit. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) products detected by genetic analyzer 3730xL then data analyzed by PowerStatsV1.2. Based on the allelic frequencies, several statistical parameters of genetic and forensic efficiency have been estimated. This includes the homozygosity and heterozygosity, effective number of alleles (n), the polymorphism information content (PIC), the power of discrimination (DP) and the power of exclusion (PE). The power of discrimination values for all tested loci was from 75 to 96%; therefore, those loci can be safely used to establish a DNA-based database for Iraq population. The high PIC values of the selected markers confirm their usefulness for genetic polymorphism studies and linkage mapping programs in human as well. The mean heterozygosity observed, is expected to have mean PIC values across the 20 loci which were 0.77, 0.81 and 0.78, respectively, indicating high gene diversity. Keywords: Autosomal STR, genetic variation, Iraq, statistical parameters. African Journal of Biotechnology , Vol 13(11), 1210-1218