POLYMORPHISM OF SHORT TANDEM REPEAT (STR) LOCI PLA2, D3S2459, D8S315 (KW38), CYP19, D3S1359, FGA, AND D8S1132 IN THE JAPANESE AND CHINESE POPULATIONS

We report a study of polymorphism for seven short tandem repeat (STR) loci in Japanese and Chinese populations. Among 104 to 134 individuals in the both population samples, eight alleles were revealed for locus PLA2, thirteen for D3S1359, eleven for FGA, eight for D8S315 (kw38), ten for D8S1132, five for CYP19, and seven for D3S2459. They correspon dingly constituted 10 to 39 genotypes therein. For most of the STRs, t here was only a single allele active as the most frequent one among th e others, except locus D3S1359 in Chinese samples (two alleles, 206 bp and 210 bp, frequency=0.273 each). Also, the population genotype conf igurations were locus specific, varying in the patterns of commonest g enotypes on each locus, e.g., one pattern for loci CYP19, D3S1359, and D8S315, one and two for loci PLAB and D3S2459, two for locus D8S1132, and one and four for locus FGA. The distributions of observed genotyp es were in Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium. Furthermore, the seven STRs wer e exhibited highly polymorphic and informative for the both population s, and the alleles could be easily separated in electrophoresis and co rrectly interpreted with side-to-side allelic ladders. Together, the r esults suggest that the tri-and tetra-meric STRs are useful genetic ma rkers for forensic practice. (C) 1997 Tohoku University Medical Press.