Addressing Quality and Quantity; the Role of DNA Repair and Whole Genome Amplification in Forensically Relevant Samples

A variety of solutions to address the limited quantity of low quality DNA have been pursued, including in vitro DNA repair and whole genome amplification (WGA); however, neither of these methods has been implemented on an operational scale. To employ these methods, it is necessary to determine if DNA repair or WGA introduce errors that affect the reliability of DNA typing results. The researchers propose to determine whether DNA repair (commercially available PreCR DNA repair enzyme cocktail) or WGA (REPLI-g® kit) introduce unacceptable levels (or undetectable) of DNA sequence alteration and to determine which inhibitory compounds and/or sample types most significantly affect the performance of DNA repair and WGA.

ca/ncf