Variant alleles, triallelic patterns, and point mutations observed in nuclear short tandem repeat typing of populations in Bosnia and Serbia.

Aim: To present a compendium of off-ladder alleles and other genotyping irregularities relating to rare/unexpected population genetic variation, observed in a large short tandem repeat (STR) database from Bosnia and Serbia.

Methods: DNA was extracted from blood stain cards relating to reference samples from a population of 32800 individuals from Bosnia and Serbia, and typed using Promega's PowerPlex16 STR kit.

Results: There were 31 distinct off-ladder alleles were observed in 10 of the 15 STR loci amplified from the PowerPlex16 STR kit.

Success rates of nuclear short tandem repeat typing from different skeletal elements.

Aim: To evaluate trends in DNA typing success rates of different skeletal elements from mass graves originating from conflicts that occurred in the former Yugoslavia (Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo) during the 1990s, and to establish correlation between skeletal sample age and success of high throughput short tandem repeat (STR) typing in the large data set of the International Commission on Missing Persons.

Method: DNA extraction and short tandem repeat (STR) typing have been attempted on over 25000 skeletal samples. The skeletal samples originated from different geographical locations where the conflicts occurred and from different time periods from 1992 to 1999.