THE SHORT TANDEM REPEAT LOCUS D3S1359

Short tandem repeats (STRs) are used by many laboratories throughout t he world performing paternity testing or criminal casework, Neverthele ss, many of the established STRs have obvious disadvantages such as lo w number of common alleles (e.g., hTPO, THO1) or alleles with frequenc ies of nearly 50% (e.g., hTPO, FES). In this paper the new STR locus D 3S1359 is described. In a population study which was carried out on 13 6 unrelated individuals from southwestern Germany, we have detected 17 different alleles. The most common allele was allele 13 (204 bp) with a frequency of 18.8%. Eight further alleles have frequencies higher t han 5%. With a heterozygozity index of 90% and 60 different genotypes, D3S1359 has shown to be a highly polymorphic and informative marker. Sequencing data of this STR locus revealed further variation. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.