ANALYSIS OF ALLELE DISTRIBUTION FOR 6 SHORT TANDEM REPEAT LOCI IN THEFRENCH-CANADIAN POPULATION OF QUEBEC

Short tandem repeat (STR) loci represent a rich source of highly polym orphic markers in the human genome which are useful for the purposes o f forensic identification and determination of biological relatedness of individuals. Here, as a part of an ongoing extensive study, we repo rt the analysis of a multilocus genotype survey of 642 to 870 chromoso mes in the French Canadian Caucasian population of Quebec at six STR l oci. The loci HUMCSF1PO, HUMTPOX, HUMTH01, HUMF13A01, HUMFESFPS, and H UMvWA were typed using two multiplex polymerase chain reactions (PCR). Amplified DNA samples were subsequently analyzed by polyacrylamide ge l electrophoresis followed by silver staining. The heterozygote freque ncies of the loci range from 0.614 to 0.820 (0.661 to 0.818 expected) and the number of alleles from 7 to 12 per locus. Although statistical ly significant deviation from HardyWeinberg expectations of genotype f requencies was noted at some loci by one or more tests, in general, th e genotype frequencies are well estimated from the product of allele f requencies at all loci. The most frequent six-locus genotype is expect ed to occur in the French Canadian population with a frequency of 3.50 by 10(-5) and together, these six loci have an average probability of discrimination of 0.9999985. The study presented here indicates that these six STR loci are informative genetic markers for identity testin g purposes in the French Canadian Caucasian population of Quebec.