Adherence issues in clinical practice

The reproducibility of short tandem repeat (STR) amplification of aDNA extracts is limited by means of formation of artifacts during PCR. One of these artifacts, the so called allelic-dropout (failure of the amplification of alleles), may result in false-homozygote typing of a sample, if genotyping is based on the analysis of a single amplification product. 30 tooth- and bone samples collected from 17 individuals of three burial sites were investigated in a blind test. Using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) the two independent segregating STR-loci HUMVWA and HUMTH01 were amplified. Corresponding to a mathematical estimation, multiple amplifications of each sample and genelocus were carried out. The results of this genotyping were compared intraindividually.