ABSTRACT
DNA genotyping has become the tool of choice in forensic analysis of biological samples (Butler 2005). is technology was developed more than 25 years ago and has evolved from using restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) to short tandem repeats (STR), mitochondrial DNA sequencing, and single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP). Among these, STR reigns as the DNA marker of choice for the vast majority of human identication applications (Butler 2006). e widespread adoption of STR genotyping kits for forensic applications started in the late 1990s and coincided with the introduction of standardized markers by the Forensic Science Service (FSS) in the United Kingdom (Lygo et al. 1994). In the early 1990s, the FSS developed small multiplexes for forensic use (Kimpton et al. 1996) but it was not until 1996 when they developed a second-generation multiplex (SGM) (Sparkes et al. 1996a,b), which provided an improved set of markers for large-scale human identication. SGM was made up of six STRs (TH01, VWA, FGA, D8S1179, D18S51, and D21S11) and Amelogenin as a sex identication marker and had a modest random match probability of approximately 1 in 50 million. In 1999, Applied Biosystems (now part of Life Technologies, Foster City, California) launched the AmpFℓSTRSGM Plus kit, an 11-plex that, in addition to the six STR markers used in the original SGM kit, contained D3S1358, D16S539, D2S1338, and D19S433 (Cotton et al. 2000).
