Evaluation of likelihood ratio calculated considering mutation and silent alleles for parentage test

Abstract

In this study, we performed simulations to evaluate the usefulness of parentage tests using likelihood ratios (LRs) calculated considering mutation and silent alleles for the Japanese population. In the simulations, genotype data of parents and a child and those of unrelated persons were generated randomly for GlobalFiler autosomal short tandem repeats and LRs were calculated for them. The results indicated that high LRs were calculated by considering mutation and silent alleles for most of the genotype data of families with mutation and/or silent alleles. We compared calculated LRs between for trios and for duos; with a few exceptions, the LRs calculated for trios were greater than those calculated for duos. We also evaluated the distribution of LRs calculated for unrelated persons and found that in most cases of unrelated persons, the LRs were less than 1, and for the majority, 0. The results of this study will contribute to the practical introduction of calculation and evaluation of LRs considering mutation and silent alleles in parentage tests.