Abstract
Horse mtDNA profiling can be useful in forensic work investigating degraded samples, hair shafts or highly dilute samples. Degraded DNA often does not allow sequencing of fragments longer than 200 nucleotides. In this study we therefore search for the most discriminatory sections within the hypervariable horse mtDNA control region. Among a random sample of 39 horses, 32 different sequences were identified in a stretch of 921 nucleotides. The sequences were assigned to the published mtDNA types A–G, and to a newly labelled minor type H. The random match probability within the analysed samples is 3.61%, and the average pairwise sequence difference is 15 nucleotides. In a “sliding window” analysis of 200-nucleotide sections of the mtDNA control region, we find that the known repetitive central motif divides the mtDNA control region into a highly diverse segment and a markedly less discriminatory segment.
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Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank Piotr Miskowicz for providing Eurasian horse samples and Doug Stephens from the National Equine Database Ltd (UK) for information on the UK horse population. This work was performed by SG in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the doctoral degree.
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Susan M.R. Gurney and Sandra Schneider contributed equally to this work.
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M.R. Gurney, S., Schneider, S., Pflugradt, R. et al. Developing equine mtDNA profiling for forensic application. Int J Legal Med 124, 617–622 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00414-010-0506-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00414-010-0506-9