An enzymatic means for the rehabilitation of low-copy number and degraded DNA.

Abstract

In spite of the immense success forensic DNA analysis has obtained over the last twenty-five years, a substantive challenge within the field of forensic DNA analysis is amplification and interpretation of degraded and low-copy number (LCN) DNA obtained from minimal and poor quality biological evidence. It has been well established that DNA profiles obtained from degraded samples are often of limited value due to the frequent occurrence of preferential amplification during polymerase chain reaction (PCR). The by-products of preferential PCR amplification are often observed as inter- and intra-locus peak imbalance, allelic dropout, and/or locus dropout. Inspired by advances in next-generation sequencing techniques, I propose a methodology for simultaneously normalizing the abundance of PCR products across all short tandem repeat (STR) loci using the DNA exonuclease, duplex-specific nucelase (DSN).