THE APPLICATION OF MITOCHONDRIAL-DNA TYPING TO THE STUDY OF WHITE CAUCASIAN GENETIC IDENTIFICATION

Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from 100 unrelated British White Caucasians was extracted, amplified and directly sequenced. Sequences of approxim ately 800 nucleotides were obtained from 2 hypervariable segments with in the non-coding region of the mitochondrial genome. A total of 91 di fferent sequences were observed with an average nucleotide diversity o f 1.1%. The most diverse pair of sequences differed at 3.6% of their n ucleotide (nt) sites. Comparison to a consensus reference sequence sho wed that each region was polymorphic to a similar extent. Different me thods of genetic analysis were used to examine the variation in each r egion, including pairwise comparisons, which demonstrated that althoug h the data did not fit a Poisson distribution, the fit was closer to a Negative Binomial distribution.