RT Journal Article
T1 Evaluating methods to correct for population stratification when estimating paternity indexes
A1 Toscanini, Ulises
A1 García Magariños, Manuel
A1 Berardi, Gabriela
A1 Egeland, Thore
A1 Raimondi, Eduardo
A1 Salas Ellacuriaga, Antonio
AB The statistical interpretation of the forensic genetic evidence requires the use of allelic frequency estimates in the reference population for the studied markers. Differences in the genetic make up of the populations can be reflected in statistically different allelic frequency distributions. One can easily figure out that collecting such information for any given population is not always possible. Therefore, alternative approaches are needed in these cases in order to compensate for the lack of information. A number of statistics have been proposed to control for population stratification in paternity testing and forensic casework, Fst correction being the only one recommended by the forensic community. In this study we aimed to evaluate the performance of Fst to correct for population stratification in forensics. By way of simulations, we first tested the dependence of Fst on the relative sizes of the sub-populations, and second, we measured the effect of the Fst corrections on the Paternity Index (PI) values compared to the ones obtained when using the local reference database. The results provide clear-cut evidence that (i) Fst values are strongly dependent on the sampling scheme, and therefore, for most situations it would be almost impossible to estimate real values of Fst; and (ii) Fst corrections might unfairly correct PI values for stratification, suggesting the use of local databases whenever possible to estimate the frequencies of genetic profiles and PI values.
PB PLOS
YR 2012
FD 2012
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10347/21820
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10347/21820
LA eng
NO Toscanini U, Garcia-Magariños M, Berardi G, Egeland T, Raimondi E, Salas A (2012) Evaluating Methods to Correct for Population Stratification when Estimating Paternity Indexes. PLoS ONE 7(11): e49832. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0049832
NO This work was funded by a grant from Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (SAF2011-26983) given to AS
DS Minerva
RD 24 abr 2026