Repatriation and identification of the Finnish World War II soldiers.

AIM: To present a summary of the organization, field search, repatriation, forensic anthropological examination, and DNA analysis for the purpose of identification of Finnish soldiers with unresolved fate in World War II. METHODS: Field searches were organized, executed, and financed by the Ministry of Education and the Association for Cherishing the Memory of the Dead of the War. Anthropological examination conducted on human remains retrieved in the field searches was used to establish the minimum number of individuals and description of the skeletal diseases, treatment, anomalies, or injuries. DNA tests were performed by extracting DNA from powdered bones and blood samples from relatives. Mitochondrial DNA sequence comparisons, together with circumstantial evidence, were used to connect the remains to the putative family members. RESULTS: At present, the skeletal remains of about a thousand soldiers have been found and repatriated. In forensic anthropological examination, several injuries related to death were documented. For the total of 181 bone samples, mtDNA HVR-1 and HVR-2 sequences were successfully obtained for 167 (92.3%) and 148 (81.8%) of the samples, respectively. Five samples yielded no reliable sequence data. Our data suggests that mtDNA preserves at least for 60 years in the boreal acidic soil. The quality of the obtained mtDNA sequence data varied depending on the sample bone type, with long compact bones (femur, tibia and humerus) having significantly better (90.0%) success rate than other bones (51.2%). CONCLUSION: Although more than 60 years have passed since the World War II, our experience is that resolving the fate of soldiers missing in action is still of uttermost importance for people having lost their relatives in the war. Although cultural and individual differences may exist, our experience presented here gives a good perspective on the importance of individual identification performed by forensic professionals.

Long D13S317 variant allele: a cautionary case report.

Exclusion at locus D13S317 between a father and child was observed in a kinship case, which at first glance appeared as a silent allele. However, a closer inspection using three commercial kits showed that the observed pattern is due to a long variant allele overlapping with different loci in different kits. Sequencing of the variant revealed a duplication within D13S317, that had also created an additional binding site for short amplicon reverse primer. If ignored, genotyping results including this variant may be wrongly interpreted.

Typing of XY (male) genotype from malignant neoplastic tissue by the amelogenin-based sex test.

DNA profiling of a cancer tissue can be problematic because of genomic instability. Here we have analyzed gastrointestinal cancer specimens from 46 males, of which seven (15%) showed aberrations in determination of gender by the widely used amelogenin test. The X-type amelogenin allele in all cases remained intact. All male tumor samples showing frequent autosomal loss of heterozygosity had a decreased signal of the Y allele from the amelogenin marker. When tested with an alternate set of primers for the amelogenin locus, the Y-type allele showed loss of heterozygosity in the same seven cases. However, when amplified with 15 Y-specific STR primers, all the cancerous tissue Y chromosomes seemed to be intact. These results indicate when malignant neoplastic tissue specimens are used, that amelogenin-based gender determination should be carefully interpreted.

Discrimination power of Investigator DIPplex loci in Finnish and Somali populations.

In this study, the suitability of the Investigator DIPplex insertion/deletion polymorphism (indel) kit for forensic casework was assessed through the genotyping of 151 Finns and 175 Somalis. Allele frequency and heterozygosity (H) of this 30-indel marker set were determined, and forensic efficacy was evaluated through estimation of discrimination power (DP), match probability (MP), typical paternity index (TPI), power of paternity exclusion (PE), and polymorphic information content (PIC). A high level of discrimination power was observed for the marker set in both sample groups (CDP>0.9999). East-west population substructure found previously in uniparental markers within Finland was not evident for this autosomal set (E-W F(ST)=0.003). High exclusion probability and low subdivision together demonstrate that these markers are well-suited for identification of individuals in Finland. However, values for typical paternity index and power of paternity exclusion were low (TPI range Finns=0.750-1.190, PE=0.996; TPI Somalis=0.680-1.090, PE=0.986) in comparison to standard STR sets, and thus indels are not recommended for use in paternity or kinship investigations, except as a supplement to other more powerful tools.

Analysis of 9p24 and 11p12-13 regions in autism spectrum disorders: rs1340513 in the JMJD2C gene is associated with ASDs in Finnish sample.

OBJECTIVE: Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) often show obsessive repetitive symptoms that are characteristic to obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Aberrant glutamate function has been suggested to a risk for both ASDs and OCD. Considering the common metabolic pathway and recent results from association studies both in OCD and ASDs, a question, whether there is common molecular background in ASDs and OCD, was raised. METHODS: Ten single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) at 9p24 and 11p12-p13 containing glutamate transporter genes SLC1A1 and SLC1A2 and their neighboring regions in 175 patients with ASDs and 216 controls of Finnish origin were analyzed using real-time-PCR or direct sequencing. RESULTS: The strongest association was detected with rs1340513 in the JMJD2C gene at 9p24.1 (P=0.007; corrected P=0.011) that is the same SNP associated with infantile autism (P=0.0007) in the autism genome project consortium (2007). No association was detected at 11p12-p13 with ASD. Interestingly, the strongest association in OCD has been found at rs301443 (P=0.000067) residing between SLC1A1 and JMJD2C at 9p24. CONCLUSION: In summary, our results give evidence for a possible common locus for OCD and ASDs at 9p24. We speculate that the area may represent a special candidate region for obsessive repetitive symptoms in ASDs.

Factors affecting the STR amplification success in poorly preserved bone samples.

BACKGROUND: Factors affecting the success of short tandem repeat (STR) amplification of poorly preserved samples are generally known, but as of yet, they have seldom been systematically assessed. Using two different maximum likelihood-based methods, the relative importance of DNA quantity, degradation and inhibition in STR genotyping was studied with DNA extracts from a set of old bone samples. First, the effects of different factors related to PCR amplification were estimated with a generalized linear mixed model. Second, error rates of allelic drop-out and drop-in were estimated on the basis of the frequency and nature of mismatches between replicates. RESULTS: In autosomal STR analyses, the most important factor was the DNA quantity, followed by the degradation, whereas in Y-chromosomal STR analysis, the most important factor was the degradation. Inhibition was a minor concern in STR analyses of poorly preserved bones. CONCLUSIONS: The success of PCR amplification depends largely on the template DNA quality (amount and degradation), but these problems can be partly compensated for by different primer design and amplification chemistry. Consequently, the relative roles of the compromising factors differ according to the kit used.

High degree of Y-chromosomal divergence within Finland--forensic aspects.

Among the Finns, the levels of autosomal STR and mtDNA variation have been reported to be relatively high and evenly distributed throughout the country. In contrast, the Y-STR variation is markedly lower than observed in most other European populations, showing notable geographical substructure within Finland. There are striking interregional differences--the western, middle and eastern parts of Finland segregate clearly, with phiST values comparable to the highest divergences among European populations. The low Y-STR diversity reduces the discriminative power of Y-chromosomal markers among Finns, and, furthermore, the geographical substructure complicates the assessment of profile probabilities in forensic settings. Here, the Y-STR diversity pattern in Finland is for the first time evaluated from the forensic viewpoint.

A comprehensive survey of human Y-chromosomal microsatellites.

We have screened the nearly complete DNA sequence of the human Y chromosome for microsatellites (short tandem repeats) that meet the criteria of having a repeat-unit size of > or = 3 and a repeat count of > or = 8 and thus are likely to be easy to genotype accurately and to be polymorphic. Candidate loci were tested in silico for novelty and for probable Y specificity, and then they were tested experimentally to identify Y-specific loci and to assess their polymorphism. This yielded 166 useful new Y-chromosomal microsatellites, 139 of which were polymorphic, in a sample of eight diverse Y chromosomes representing eight Y-SNP haplogroups. This large sample of microsatellites, together with 28 previously known markers analyzed here--all sharing a common evolutionary history--allowed us to investigate the factors influencing their variation. For simple microsatellites, the average repeat count accounted for the highest proportion of repeat variance (approximately 34%). For complex microsatellites, the largest proportion of the variance (again, approximately 34%) was explained by the average repeat count of the longest homogeneous array, which normally is variable. In these complex microsatellites, the additional repeats outside the longest homogeneous array significantly increased the variance, but this was lower than the variance of a simple microsatellite with the same total repeat count. As a result of this work, a large number of new, highly polymorphic Y-chromosomal microsatellites are now available for population-genetic, evolutionary, genealogical, and forensic investigations.