Individuality and Parentage

Abstract

Most species of sexually reproducing organisms harbor sufficient variation that appropriate molecular genetic assays can distinguish one individual from another with high probability. Furthermore, the transmission of genetic markers across a single generation, as interpreted against the established rules of Mendelian inheritance, provides a powerful means for determining parent-offspring links. Issues of genetic identity versus nonidentity, and of parentage (maternity and paternity) fall at the extreme micro-evolutionary end of the phylogenetic continuum. The classes of genetic markers that have proved most suitable are those that provide highly variable qualitative character states with known transmission properties, e.g., allozymes and hypervariable single-locus and multilocus RFLPs.

With the recognition.. that the.. genome is replete with DNA sequence polymorphisms such as RFLP’s, it was only a small leap to imagine that DNA could, in principle, provide the ultimate identifier.

E.S. Lander, 1991