Testing for parentage and kinship

Abstract

Parentage analyses are of interest to workers in health care, law enforcement, immigration and other fields. This review describes recent applications, technical advances, and quality improvements. Mutations at short tandem repeat sequence loci confound interpretations of genetic data used to assess all blood relationships. Rates of the usual mutation type (change in repeat number) are probably related to specific alleles at each locus as well as to allele length, locus, and gender. Short tandem repeat sequences have relatively limited information content per locus. Intermediate tandem repeat sequence loci may be better. In immigration proceedings, probabilities can be calculated for excluding parentage in blood relatives who might impersonate the biologic parent. Unrelated immigrants from a subpopulation may appear to be related, but it is now possible to statistically determine the effect of population substructure on kinship determinations. In forensic analyses, sex chromosomal (X and Y) short tandem repeat sequences and mitochondrial DNA sequence variations have helped identify the parental lineages of human remains. Recent laboratory quality improvements include a way to estimate the frequency of common mother-child specimen mislabeling in routine paternity cases. In prenatal testing there are now methods for avoiding erroneous assignment of contaminant maternal alleles to the fetus. False paternity exclusions can be avoided by adhering to a standard of the American Association of Blood Banks requiring duplicate DNA isolation and retesting of excluded men. Laboratory technology and quality have advanced, but genetic tests with greater information content are needed. Better communication is highly desirable between persons requesting tests and parentage laboratories.