DNA Fingerprinting: State of the Science

DNA fingerprinting had a well-defined birthday. In the March 7, 1985 issue of Nature, Alec Jeffreys and coworkers described the first develop­ ment ofmu1tilocus probes capable of simultaneously revealing hypervari­ ability at many loci in the human genome and called the procedure DNA fingerprinting. It was a royal birth in the best British tradition. In a few months the emerging technique had permitted the denouement of hith­ erto insoluble immigration and paternity disputes and was already heralded as a major revolution in forensic sciences. In the next year (October, 1986) DNA fingerprinting made a dramatic entree in criminal investigations with the Enderby murder case, whose story eventually was turned into a best-selling book ("The Blooding" by Joseph Wambaugh). Today DNA typing systems are routinely used in public and commercial forensic laboratories in at least 25 different countries and have replaced conventional protein markers as the methods of choice for solving paternity disputes and criminal cases. Moreover, DNA fingerprinting has emerged as a new domain of intense scientific activity, with myriad applications in just about every imaginable territory of life sciences. The Second International Conference on DNA Fingerprinting, which was held in Belo Horizonte, Brazil in November of 1992, was a clear proof of this.

I Basic Aspects of DNA Fingerprints: Genomic Organization, Dynamics and Variability of Tandemly Repeated DNA Sequences.- 1 Brief introduction to human DNA fingerprinting.- 1 Notes on the definition and nomenclature of tandemly repetitive DNA sequences.- 2 On the essence of “meaningless” simple repetitive DNA in eukaryote genomes.- 3 Detection, cloning, and distribution of minisatellites in some mammalian genomes.- 4 Frequency of restriction site polymorphisms in the region surrounding VNTR loci.- 5 Human VNTR mutation and sex.- 6 Variation of minisatellites in chemically induced mutagenesis and in gene amplification 71.- 7 Iterons of stringently controlled plasmids and DNA fingerprinting.- 2 Arbitrary primed PCR fingerprinting of RNA applied to mapping differentially expressed genes.- 3 Rapid analysis of PCR components and products by acidic non-gel capillary electrophoresis.- II Application of DNA Fingerprinting to the Study of Human Populations.- 1 Minisatellite variant repeat mapping: Application to DNA typing and mutation analysis.- 2 Microsatellites and disease: A new paradigm.- 1 A unified approach to study hypervariable polymorphisms: Statistical considerationsof determining relatedness and population distances.- 2 The forensic significance of various reference population databases for estimating the rarity of variable number of tandem repeat (VNTR) loci profiles.- 3 Population genetics of 14 ethnic groups using phenotypic data from VNTR loci.- 4 Genetic variation among the Mapuche Indians from the Patagonian region of Argentina: Mitochondrial DNA sequence variation and allele frequencies of several nuclear genes.- 5 Microsatellite and HLA class II oligonucleotide typing in a population of Yanomami Indians.- 6 Iserables: A Bedouin village in Switzerland?.- 1 Paternity testing with the F10 multilocus DNA fingerprinting probe.- 2 The formal analysis of multilocus DNA fingerprints.- 3 Oligonucleotide DNA fingerprinting: Results of a multi-center study on reliability and validity.- 4 Testing deficiency paternity cases with a Y-linked tetranucleotide repeat polymorphism.- 5 Short tandem repeat loci: Application to forensic and human remains identification.- 6 Forensic DNA typing by the solid-phase minisequencing method.- 7 The use of polymorphic Alu insertions in human DNA fingerprinting.- III Application of DNA Fingerprinting to the Study of Microorganisms, Plants, and Animals.- 1 Applications of DNA fingerprinting in plant population studies.- 1 DNA- and PCR-fingerprinting in fungi.- 2 DNA fingerprinting reveals relationships between strains of Trypanosoma rangeli and Trypanosoma cruzi.- 3 The use of RAPDs for the analysis of parasites.- 4 The use of RAPDs for the study of the genetic diversity of Schistosoma mansoni and Trypanosoma cruzi.- 5 Variability and intra nest genetic relationships in Hymenoptera: DNA fingerprinting applied to the solitary bee Megachille rotundat.- 6 Sperm utilization in honeybees as detected by Ml3 DNA fingerprints.- 1 High mating success of low rank males in Limia perugiae (Pisces: Poeciliidae) as determined by DNA fingerprinting.- 2 Quantitative traits in chicken associated with DNA fingerprint bands.- 3 Influence of extra-pair paternity on parental care in great tits (Parus major).- 4 Paternity testing of endangered species of birds by DNA fingerprinting with non-radioactive labelled oligonucleotide probes.- 5 Characterization and applications of multilocus DNA fingerprints in Brazilian endangered macaws.- 1 DNA fingerprinting of trait-selected mouse lines and linkage analysis in reference families.- 2 Dog genetic polymorphism revealed by synthetic tandem repeats.- 3 Characterization of canine microsatellites.- 4 Application of human minisatellite probes to the development of informative DNA fingerprints and the isolation of locusspecific markers in animals.- 5 The ‘individualization’ of large North American mammals.- 6 Bovine microsatellites: Racial differences and association with SINE-elements.- 7 Oligonucleotide fingerprinting of free-ranging and captive rhesus macaques from Cayo Santiago: Paternity assignment and comparison of heterozygosity.- 8 Use of highly repeated DNA polymorphisms for genome diagnosis and evolutionary studies in the genus Beta.