Body fluid identification and assignment to donors using a targeted mRNA massively parallel sequencing approach – results of a second EUROFORGEN / EDNAP collaborative exercise

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

  • S. Ingold
  • G. Dørum
  • E. Hanson
  • D. Ballard
  • A. Berti
  • K. B. Gettings
  • F. Giangasparo
  • Kampmann, Marie-Louise
  • F. X. Laurent
  • Morling, Niels
  • W. Parson
  • C. R. Steffen
  • A. Ulus
  • M. van den Berge
  • K. J. van der Gaag
  • V. Verdoliva
  • C. Xavier
  • J. Ballantyne
  • C. Haas

In a previous EUROFORGEN/EDNAP collaborative exercise, we tested two assays for targeted mRNA massively parallel sequencing for the identification of body fluids/tissues, optimized for the Illumina MiSeq/FGx and the Ion Torrent PGM/S5 platforms, respectively. The task of the second EUROFORGEN/EDNAP collaborative exercise was to analyze dried body fluid stains with two different multiplexes, the former Illumina 33plex mRNA panel for body fluid/tissue identification and a 35plex cSNP panel for assignment of body fluids/tissues to donors that was introduced in a proof-of-concept study recently. The coding region SNPs (cSNPs) are located within the body fluid specific mRNA transcripts and represent a direct link between the body fluid and the donor. We predicted the origin of the stains using a partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) model, where most of the single source samples were correctly predicted. The mixed body fluid stains showed poorer results, however, at least one component was predicted correctly in most stains. The cSNP data demonstrated that coding region SNPs can give valuable information on linking body fluids/tissues with donors in mixed body fluid stains. However, due to the unfavorable performance of some cSNPs, the interpretation remains challenging. As a consequence, additional markers are needed to increase the discrimination power in each body fluid/tissue category.

Original languageEnglish
Article number102208
JournalForensic Science International: Genetics
Volume45
Pages (from-to)1-11
ISSN1872-4973
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Mar 2020

    Research areas

  • body fluid identification, coding region SNPs (cSNPs), Forensic science, linear discriminant analysis (LDA), massively parallel sequencing (MPS), mRNA profiling, partial least squares (PLS)

ID: 234076852