Navigating population-level coancestry in forensic mixture analysis.

ABSTRACT: The genetic similarity of unrelated individuals of the same population can be measured through the coancestry coefficient, which quantifies the probability of a pair of alleles randomly chosen having a common ancestor. It is thus expected that the higher this coefficient, the lower the genetic variation between individuals of a population. This may weaken the evidence's weight in forensic genetics settings, whenever a person of interest cannot be excluded as a contributor to the evidence. Under simple assumptions, the impact of disregarding coancestry when quantifying the likelihood of an individual having contributed to a mixture evidence sample can be evaluated through an algebraic approach. This methodology becomes, however, unfeasible when considering all the information currently obta

SUBMITTER: Costa C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12855835 | biostudies-literature | 2026 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature