DNA TYPING OF A POLYMERASE CHAIN-REACTION AMPLIFIED D1S80 AMELOGENIN MULTIPLEX USING CAPILLARY ELECTROPHORESIS AND A MIXED ENTANGLED POLYMER MATRIX/

In this study, a technique was developed to separate by capillary elec trophoresis (CE) the widely varying DNA fragment sizes produced by a m ultiplex polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification of the loci D1S 80 and amelogenin. Experiments were performed to analyze different buf fer systems and obtain optimal resolution for the separation. A matrix composed of two different molecular weights of the same polymer was c onstructed to separate the DNA fragments with baseline resolution, and a cubic spline fit was used to estimate the size of DNA fragments ove r 350 base pairs. Over 100 samples were examined to demonstrate the ra pid, robust and precise characteristics of this CE system. An average relative standard deviation of 0.3 % was obtained for the sizing of th e D1S80 alleles in these samples. DNA from mixed body fluid samples, s amples subjected to environmental insult, and D1S80 sequence variants were also typed successfully. These results demonstrate that CE is a v iable method for analysis of D1S80 and amelogenin forensic DNA samples .