Ancient DNA profiling by megaplex amplications

Abstract

Simultaneous amplification of nine human short tandem repeat (STR) DNA sequences and the amelogenin locus allows reducing to an absolute minimum the amount of sample material that is necessary for genetic identification or kinship analysis. Valuable remains can be studied this way without any visible damage, as is demonstrated by typing the DNA of a tooth root from the Saxon warrior Widukind, who died about 1200 years ago. The broad applicability of the megaplex approach is shown by typing bone and teeth specimens ranging from a few months to 3000 years of age employing AmpFlSTR Profiler Plus. Additionally, megaplex STR typing is the method of choice for proving the authenticity of molecular results derived from ancient degraded DNA.

Non-Invasive Genetic Identification of the Red FoxVulpes vulpesin the Shiretoko National Park, Eastern Hokkaido, Japan

“…Microsatellite loci having alleles in longer fragment sizes lead lower success rates and reproducibility of PCR amplification than the loci having shorter alleles (e.g. Hummel et al 1999;Nielsen et al 1999;Wandeler et al 2003). Frantzen et al (1998) also reported that short PCR fragments (100-200 bp) are significantly suitable to fecal identification analysis compared to longer fragments.…”

A comparative study of two methods of dental pulp extraction for genetic fingerprinting

“…Crushing is usually described in the literature. With this technique, [3,8,11] and nuclear DNA [2,10] are obtained. It is simple to perform and can be used on all types of teeth.…”

“…DNA samples can be used to genotype and identify human bodies, determine sex, identify diseases, study the genetics of populations, migrations and throw light on the origins of modern man [1][2][3][4].…”

“…They are often the only components containing any DNA likely to help identify decomposed bodies or to study ancient populations [6,7]. Dental DNA is found principally in the pulp and different techniques for collecting DNA by crushing, sectioning and trepanation have been described [1][2][3][8][9][10][11].…”

Kinship analysis of the Jomon skeletons unearthed from a double burial at the Usu-Moshiri site, Hokkaido, Japan

“…114, 2006 STR and/or VNTR loci in chromosomal DNA can be analyzed, and these loci have been successfully analyzed in some studies of ancient DNA (e.g. Kurosaki et al 1993;Hummel et al 1999). Unfortunately, STR and VNTR analyses were not successful in the present study.…”