Weight-of-evidence for DNA identification of missing persons and human remains using CODIS
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Weight-of-evidence for DNA identification of missing persons and human remains using CODIS Sigal Starinsky-Elbaz 1 & Tanya Ram 1 & Lev Voskoboinik 2 & Zohar Pasternak 3 Accepted: 18 March 2020 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract DNA Identification of unidentified human remains (UHR) is performed in Israel by comparing the UHR’s short tandem repeat (STR) profiles to a national database of STR profiles taken from relatives of missing persons. Kinship analysis is performed using the CODIS 7.0 software and results are stated as a Joint Pedigree Likelihood Ratio (JPLR). The weight-of-evidence for JPLR has never been studied, making it difficult to interpret the meaning of specific values in terms of whether UHR are related to specific pedigrees. Therefore, the aim of this study was to statistically determine the practical meaning and context of the JPLR. We used 440 million pairs of simulated DNA profiles and 294 pairs of real ones from known siblings, parent/offspring and unrelated persons. A Score-Based Likelihood Ratio (SBLR) was empirically constructed, validated and compared to both JPLR and the LR produced by CODIS. Our results show that CODIS’s JPLR and LR values for single-person pedigrees overestimate the level of support for both “parent/child” and “siblings” propositions relative to the “unrelated” proposition, by up to two orders of magnitude. A practical table is given for correcting this phenomenon, with statistical interpretation (i.e. SBLR) for each JPLR score, including verbal levels of propositional support ranging from “no support” (SBLR1 Million). Keywords Likelihood ratio . JPLR . Missing persons . CODIS
Introduction Identification of unidentified human remains (UHR) is a challenge many law-enforcement organizations around the world cope with on a daily basis. One of the most important methods for such identification is DNA analysis [1]. In Israel, for Sigal Starinsky-Elbaz and Tanya Ram contributed equally to this work. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s12024-020-00248-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Zohar Pasternak [email protected] 1
DNA Database Laboratory, Division of Identification and Forensic Science (DIFS), Israel Police National HQ, 91906 Jerusalem, Israel
2
DNA and forensic biology Laboratory, Division of Identification and Forensic Science (DIFS), Israel Police National HQ, 91906 Jerusalem, Israel
3
Quality Assurance and Evidence Unit, Division of Identification and Forensic Science (DIFS), Israel Police National HQ, 91906 Jerusalem, Israel
example, 16-loci DNA short tandem repeat (STR) profiles are produced and placed in the national UHR database which contains 347 profiles as of November 2019. In a parallel process, STR profiles are obtained from DNA samples of relatives of missing persons (MP) and placed in a “familial” database; as of November 2019, this database contains 1322 profiles which are organized in 433 p
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