Investigator HDplex markers: allele frequencies and mutational events in a North Italian population

Autosomal short tandem repeats (STRs) analysis represents the method of election in forensic genetics and up to now, 23 STRs are available for these purposes. However, in particular circumstances such as human identification or complex kinship cases, examination of additional STRs may be required in order to obtain reliable conclusions. For this purpose, a new multiplex STR system, namely Investigator® HDplex kit (QIAGEN) that coamplifies a set of 12 autosomal loci, 9 of which, represents novel supplementary STRs, was recently developed. A population sample of 359 unrelated healthy subjects residing in North Italy was typed to determine allele frequencies, forensic parameters and genetic distances among European populations. Furthermore, to evaluate the suitability of the HDplex kit as an auxiliary tool for paternity testing, mutation rates were estimated on 84 confirmed family trios. The 12 loci resulted highly informative with a combined power of discrimination of 0.999998 and no departures from Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium were observed with the sole exception of locus D4S2366. From the comparison of our population sample and European reference populations, a single significant difference was revealed with the Poland population at D4S2366 locus. With regard to the mutation rate study, on a total of 2,016 meioses considered, six singlestep mutational events were observed and the average mutation rate calculated was of 2.94×10−3 per locus per generation (95 % confidence interval, 1.08×10−3–6.39×10−3).