ABSTRACT
This chapter describes some of the molecular biology and the inheritance and interpretation models relevant to the forensic analysis of non-autosomal markers. It discusses the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) profiling of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and the two gonosomes; the X and Y chromosomes. The analysis of mtDNA is of considerable use in forensic science, and it has been extensively used in archaeology and anthropology. In forensic science mtDNA analysis is often used to provide evidence where nuclear DNA fails to give a result or when distant relatives must be used as reference samples. The inheritance of mtDNA in interspecific crosses of mice was believed to be strictly uniparental until a more sensitive technique was used to detect low levels of paternal mtDNA’. Stability varies along the mtDNA genome as some base positions appear to be very stable while others are highly mutable.
