Erratum to: More Comprehensive Forensic Genetic Marker Analyses for Accurate Human Remains Identification Using Massively Parallel DNA Sequencing

Identity informative SNP associations in the UK Biobank

Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are amenable to genotyping DNA from degraded, inhibited, and/or ancient substrates due to their relatively small amplicon size. Though they have clear advantages over traditional short tandem repeat (STR) typing for specific casework scenarios, the advances in massively parallel sequencing (MPS) have drastically increased the utility of this marker type. The biallelic nature of SNPs makes them individually less informative than STRs due to limited heterozygosity; however, in sufficiently large multiplexes, identity informative SNPs (iiSNPs) may produce combined random match probabilities comparable to STR typing. Multiple MPS library preparation kits now include iiSNPs and similar to STRs, these loci have been rigorously characterized during multiplex development. The relative accessibility of genome-wide association study (GWAS) summary statistics enables re-investigation of forensically relevant targets in high-quality datasets. Here, 4085 GWASs from the UK Biobank European datasets (UKB; 787 ≤ N ≤ 361,194) were mined for iiSNPs typed by the ForenSeq DNA Signature Prep Kit (Verogen). Seven iiSNPs had genome-wide association (p ≤ 5 × 10^-8) with 17 phenotypes in UKB Europeans. Most notably, these relationships involve two outwardly visible characteristics: standing height (rs907100; β = 0.011, p = 1.35 × 10^-10) and hair/balding patterns (rs2399332; β = -0.009, p = 3.83 × 10^-8). The remaining associations involve red blood cell characteristics and measures of lung function. Though these traits are highly polygenic and the individual SNP effects described here have been refuted empirically, we describe the importance and ease of exploring high-quality, freely accessible data to continuously and robustly characterize new and existing forensically relevant loci.

A SNP panel for identification of DNA and RNA specimens

BACKGROUND

SNP panels that uniquely identify an individual are useful for genetic and forensic research. Previously recommended SNP panels are based on DNA profiles and mostly contain intragenic SNPs. With the increasing interest in RNA expression profiles, we aimed for establishing a SNP panel for both DNA and RNA-based genotyping.

RESULTS

To determine a small set of SNPs with maximally discriminative power, genotype calls were obtained from DNA and blood-derived RNA sequencing data belonging to healthy, geographically dispersed, Dutch individuals. SNPs were selected based on different criteria like genotype call rate, minor allele frequency, Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium and linkage disequilibrium. A panel of 50 SNPs was sufficient to identify an individual uniquely: the probability of identity was 6.9 × 10^- 20 when assuming no family relations and 1.2 × 10^- 10 when accounting for the presence of full sibs. The ability of the SNP panel to uniquely identify individuals on DNA and RNA level was validated in an independent population dataset. The panel is applicable to individuals from European descent, with slightly lower power in non-Europeans. Whereas most of the genes containing the 50 SNPs are expressed in various tissues, our SNP panel needs optimization for other tissues than blood.

CONCLUSIONS

This first DNA/RNA SNP panel will be useful to identify sample mix-ups in biomedical research and for assigning DNA and RNA stains in crime scenes to unique individuals.