Mini-STRs screening of 12 relatives of Hausa Origin in northern Nigeria

Abstract

The forensic identification of closely related individuals  genetically has often been difficult probably due to strong phenotypic concordances. Short tandem repeats (STRs) have been used in kinship tracing, identifying missing person and skeletal remains, paternity testing and mass disasters victim identification. This research was performed to determine the efficiency of the miniSTRsD14S1434 and D9S1122 in differentiating between closely related persons in Nigeria. The sample consisted of twelve individuals who self-identify as relatives. DNA extracted from blood was amplified using primers for the two miniSTR loci and resolved subsequently on 4% Agarose gel. An initial denaturation for 3 min at 95°C with annealing temperature at 57.4°C and 30 cycles of PCR produced best results. Different alleles of the markers D9S1122 (9, 10, 12, 13, 14,15,16) and D14S1434 (13,15,17,19,20) were identified in the samples studied with a high degree of heterozygosity as seen in the computed estimates of 0.8000 and 0.6364 for the D9S1122 and D14S1434 loci respectively. The gel resolutions show a combined probability of exclusion of 0.94 for the population and 0.97 for siblings. These loci can therefore efficiently differentiate individuals and establish family relationship in the Hausa population and will be important for forensic identification of individuals in the population.

Keywords: STRs; identification; Hausa; Nigeria; Alleles