Inferring ethnicity from mitochondrial DNA sequence.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The assignment of DNA samples to coarse population groups can be a useful but difficult task. One such example is the inference of coarse ethnic groupings for forensic applications. Ethnicity plays an important role in forensic investigation and can be inferred with the help of genetic markers. Being maternally inherited, of high copy number, and robust persistence in degraded samples, mitochondrial DNA may be useful for inferring coarse ethnicity. In this study, we compare the performance of methods for inferring ethnicity from the sequence of the hypervariable region of the mitochondrial genome.

Results

We present the results of comprehensive experiments conducted on datasets extracted from the mtDNA population database, showing that ethnicity inference based on

SUBMITTER: Lee C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3090759 | biostudies-literature | 2011 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature