Degradation in forensic trace DNA samples explored by massively parallel sequencing

Abstract

Routine forensic analysis using STRs will fail if the DNA is too degraded. The DNA degradation process in biological stain material is not well understood. In this study we sequenced old semen and blood stains by massively parallel sequencing. The sequence data coverage was used to measure degradation across the genome. The results supported the contention that degradation is uniform across the genome, showing no evidence of regions with increased or decreased resistance towards degradation. Thus the lack of genetic regions robust to degradation removes the possibility of using such regions to further optimize analysis performance for degraded DNA.

Keywords: DNA degradation; Massively parallel sequencing.