An economical and efficient method for postmortem DNA sampling in mass fatalities.

In mass fatality events, the need to identify large numbers of deceased persons using DNA can be a significant drain on already overburdened forensic practitioners, both in the field setting and the laboratory. The laboratory may be required to extract DNA from a variety of postmortem sample types, family or direct reference samples related to the missing, and perform matching of these results in a short period of time. While most forensic institutions are well equipped to handle both family and direct reference samples, postmortem samples such as bone or heterogeneous tissue samples can be difficult for labs to analyze.

DNA extraction from aged skeletal samples for STR typing by capillary electrophoresis.

STR analysis of DNA extracted from skeletal samples can play an important role in the identification of missing persons. Here we present a method for the extraction of DNA from skeletal samples involving complete demineralization and digestion of the sample, followed by purification by silica binding. This method, together with the multiplex STR typing approach also presented, has proven highly successful in the recovery of DNA profiles from degraded, aged skeletal remains from a wide range of environmental contexts.

Automatable full demineralization DNA extraction procedure from degraded skeletal remains.

During the 7 year period from 2002 to 2009 a high volume, silica-binding DNA extraction protocol for bone, based on modified QIAGEN's Blood Maxi Kit protocol was highly successful permitting the DNA matching of >14,500 missing persons from former Yugoslavia. This method, however, requires large amount of bone material and large volumes of reagents. The logical evolution was to develop a more efficient extraction protocol for bone samples that uses significantly less starting material while increasing the success in obtaining DNA results from smaller, more challenging samples.