FRENCH CAUCASIAN POPULATION-DATA FOR HUMTHO1 AND HUMFES FPS SHORT TANDEM REPEAT (STR) SYSTEMS/

The recent technology of amplification of DNA sequences by the polymer ase chain reaction (PCR) has already proved to be a very useful tool f or the analysis of variable number of tandem repeat (VNTR) loci. Short tandem repeat (STR) loci appear as other promising PCR-based identifi cation systems. In fact, DNA typing based on PCR amplification of STRs is very sensitive and allows to overcome major problems encountered w hen using the RFLP method, such as typing of very small amounts of DNA , highly degraded DNA or mixtures of DNA from more than one individual . Two STR systems, HUMTH01 (a tetranucleotide repeat (AATG) sequence l ocated on chromosome 11) and HUMFES/FPS (a tetranucleotide repeat (ATT T) sequence located on chromosome 15) were investigated in order to de termine allele and genotype frequencies for a French caucasian populat ion sample. HUMTH01 and HUMFES/FPS alleles were amplified by the use o f PCR and amplified STR sequences were analyzed on 6% Hydrolink Long R anger gels and visualized by silver staining. The study was conducted on a sample of unrelated individuals (N approximate to 190) randomly s elected from the French caucasian population. The genotype distributio ns met Hardy-Weinberg expectations for both HUMTH01 and HUMFES/FPS STR systems. Furthermore, an additional allele, never reported before was observed at the HUMFES/FPS locus: it migrates as an allele containing 7 repeat units and corresponds to the smallest allele identified for this locus.