Investigating the Effectiveness of Forensic Application and Population Genetic Diversity Using a Multi-InDel System in Chinese Hezhou and Southern Shaanxi Han Populations.

Background: Multi-insertion/deletion (multi-InDel) markers have greater potential in forensic genetics than InDel, and their efficacy in paternity testing, individual identification, DNA mixture detection, and ancestry inference remains to be explored.

Material and method: We designed an efficient and robust system consisting of 41 multi-InDels to evaluate its efficacy in forensic applications in Chinese Hezhou Han (HZH) and Southern Shaanxi Han (SSH) populations and explore the genetic relationships among the SSH, HZH, and 26 reference populations.

Results and conclusions: The obtained results showed that most of the 41 multi-InDels had relatively high genetic variations. The cumulative power of discrimination and probability of exclusion values of 40 multi-InDels (except MI38) in HZH and SSH populations both exceeded 1 - e^-25 and 1 - e^-6, respectively. The genetic compositions of HZH and SSH populations were similar to those of East Asian populations, and the multi-InDel system could well distinguish East Asians, Africans, and Europeans. These results indicated that the multi-InDel system can serve as an effective tool to provide important clue for the forensic practical application and also to better analyze the genetic background of Chinese Han population.