The interest of nails in genetic identification of human decomposed cadavers

Abstract

The ability to recover DNA and ST R data from bones and teeth exposed over time to a variety of environmental conditions, has become a valuable tool for individual identifications and/or kinship analysis. However, nails can be an advantageous alternative of these remain samples, since it is easier to perform the analysis process, without the need of powdering those mineralized elements. On the other hand, the high success rates for nuclear ST R typing reported here, further confirmed that ST Rs could be considered a method of choice in casework involving skeletal remains. Nevertheless, when the DNA from the samples were degraded another approach to trying to recover information from them, is to reduce the size of the PCR products by moving primers as close as possible to the ST R repeat region.