Towards broadening Forensic DNA Phenotyping beyond pigmentation: Improving the prediction of head hair shape from DNA

Publication date: Available online 29 August 2018Source: Forensic Science International: GeneticsAuthor(s): Ewelina Pośpiech, Yan Chen, Magdalena Kukla-Bartoszek, Krystal Breslin, Anastasia Aliferi, Jeppe D. Andersen, David Ballard, Lakshmi Chaitanya, Ana Freire-Aradas, Kristiaan J. van der Gaag, Lorena Girón-Santamaría, Theresa E. Gross, Mario Gysi, Gabriela Huber, Ana Mosquera-Miguel, Charanya Muralidharan, Małgorzata Skowron, Ángel Carracedo, Cordula Haas, Niels MorlingAbstractHuman head hair shape, commonly classified as straight, wavy, curly or frizzy, is an attractive target for Forensic DNA Phenotyping and other applications of human appearance prediction from DNA such as in paleogenetics. The genetic knowledge underlying head hair shape variation was recently improved by the outcome of a series of genome-wide association and replication studies in a total of 26,964 subjects, highlighting 12 loci of which 8 were novel and introducing a prediction model for Europeans based on 14 SNPs. In the present study, we evaluated the capacity of DNA-based head hair shape prediction by investigating an extended set of candidate SNP predictors and by using an independent set of samples for model validation. Prediction model building was carried out in 9,674 subjects (6,068 from Europe, 2,899 from Asia and 707 of admixed European and Asian ancestries), used previously, by considering a novel list of 90 candidate SNPs. For model validation, genotype and phenotype data were newly ...
Source: Forensic Science International: Genetics - Category: Forensic Medicine Source Type: research