Application of DNA Typing Technologies in Forensic Medicine

Nuclear DNA markers are widely used for crime investigation and paternity testing. Parentage testing interpretation relies on the fact that Short Tandem Repeats are inherited in a true Mendelian fashion and express a codominant nature of allelic variants. DNA microsatellites or Short Tandem Repeats are short, tandemly repeated sequences of a bi-, tri- or tetranucleotide unit with a random distribution throughout the genome. They have been used extensively in applications as diverse as diagnosis of inherited diseases and forensic medicine for DNA fingerprinting and parentage testing. The success of this last application is due to the fact that Short Tandem Repeats are highly polymorphic and, at the same time, they are sufficiently stable to be inherited unaltered from one generation to the next. [Archives Medical Review Journal 2013; 22(3.000): 335-346]