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                                             BIOINFORMATICS COLLOQUIUM
						College of Science
                                              George Mason University
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   	                   Human identification using information from the mtDNA genome
						 
                                                    Mark Wilson

                                         Western Carolina State University
                                                          
Abstract:
Degraded human tissues, hair and some bone samples have little nuclear DNA available for typing and 
hence traditional short tandem repeat (STR) analysis may be subject to failure or stochastic effects.  
For these kinds of samples, forensic examiners have turned to mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequencing 
analysis.  Traditionally, the target for mtDNA sequencing has been the hyper-variable control region 
(CR).  While highly variable and valuable for human identity testing, the CR region harbors several 
common haplotypes.  Recently, it has been established that additional genetic information can be 
recovered and typed from the mtDNA coding regions for human identification purposes. This talk will 
focus on the phylogenetic structure of human variation as assessed through mtDNA sequence analysis, 
and the promise of increasing the discrimination potential of mtDNA through sequencing of the whole 
mtDNA genome.