Resizing reaction volumes for the ForenSeq™ DNA Signature Prep kit library preparation

The introduction of next generation sequencing (NGS; also known as massively parallel sequencing) technology in the field of forensic genetics has been welcomed by the scientific community, above all because it complements the weaknesses of capillary electrophoresis (CE) in the analysis of genetic markers, such as single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) typing. However, one of the main obstacles to its adoption does not seem to be the cost of the instrumentation, but rather the cost of the NGS library preparation kits. With the aim of reducing the cost of library preparation without compromising the quality of the results, we tried to scale down reaction volumes for the first two polymerase chain reactions in the amplification and enrichment phases of the targeted loci of library preparation using the ForenSeq DNA Signature Prep kit. We used 1 L templated DNA input to a concentration of 1 ng/L, instead of the 5 L at 0.2ng/L recommended by the manufacturer. Our findings indicate that reduction of the library preparation volume using the ForenSeq DNA Signature Prep kit did not interfere with the quality and reproducibility of the DNA profiles obtained and can help lower the overall cost of NGS.