NCJ Number
246431
Journal
Forensic Science International: Genetics Volume: 7 Issue: 6 Dated: December 2013 Pages: 573-580
Date Published
December 2013
Length
4 pages
Annotation
The Y-chromosomal phylogenetic tree has a wide variety of important forensic applications and therefore it needs to be state-of-the-art.
Abstract
The Y-chromosomal phylogenetic tree has a wide variety of important forensic applications and therefore it needs to be state-of-the-art. Nevertheless, since the last official published tree many publications reported additional Y-chromosomal lineages and other phylogenetic topologies. Therefore, it is difficult for forensic scientists to interpret those reports and use an up-to-date tree and corresponding nomenclature in their daily work. Whole genome sequencing WGS data is useful to verify and optimise the current phylogenetic tree for haploid markers. The AMY-tree software is the first open access program which analyses WGS data for Y-chromosomal phylogenetic applications. Here, all published information is collected in a phylogenetic tree and the correctness of this tree is checked based on the first large analysis of 747 WGS samples with AMY-tree. The obtained result is one phylogenetic tree with all peer-reviewed reported Y-SNPs without the observed recurrent and ambiguous mutations. Nevertheless, the results showed that currently only the genomes of a limited set of Y-chromosomal sub-haplogroups is available and that many newly reported Y-SNPs based on WGS projects are false positives, even with high sequencing coverage methods. This study demonstrates the usefulness of AMY-tree in the process of checking the quality of the present Y-chromosomal tree and it accentuates the difficulties to enlarge this tree based on only WGS methods.