FORENSIC EVALUATION OF HUMCD4 - AN ITALIAN DATABASE

The YTTTC pentanucleotide short tandem repeat polymorphism HumCD4 was studied in an Italian population sample. PCR products were compared to an allelic ladder by manual PAGE and silver staining. A total of 6 al leles ranging from 5 to 12 repeats were represented in the analysed sa mple, of which 3 alleles (10, 6 and 5 re peats) were predominant and d isplayed a combined frequency of 0.91. Successful amplification was ob tained from different sources such as blood and urine stains, teeth an d paraffin embedded tissues. Results were also determined in cases of severely degraded DNA. We consider that the HUMCD4 polymorphism may be a useful tool for individual identification, paternity testing, popul ation studies and have also employed this locus to monitor engraftment of bone marrow transplantation.