Applications of 1993 single nucleotide polymorphism loci in forensic pairwise kinship identifications and inferences

Kinship testing plays critical roles in criminal investigations, missing person searches, civil disputes, as well as identifying disaster victims. The existing commonly used short tandem repeat (STR) loci have limited effectiveness in the identification of second-degree and more distant kinships. In this study, a total of 1993 SNP loci of 119 Chinese Han individuals from eight families were sequenced on the MGISEQ-2000RS platform. The system powers of this panel for kinship identifications were evaluated based on both the likelihood ratio (LR) and identical by state (IBS) methods. The results indicated that this panel could be used as an effective tool to kinship analyses including paternity testing, full sibling testing, second-degree kinships, and first cousin kinship analyses. Both the LR and IBS methods could be applied in distinguishing first-degree and second-degree pairs from unrelated individuals. Based on the 1993 SNP loci, LR>1000 and LR