The 2011 GeFI collaborative exercise. Concordance study, proficiency testing and Italian population data on the new ENFSI/EDNAP loci D1S1656, D2S441, D10S1248, D12S391, D22S1045

The 2011 collaborative exercise of the ISFG Italian Working Group GeFI was aimed at validating the five ENFSI/EDNAP miniSTR loci D1S1656, D2S441, D10S1248, D12S391 and D22S1045. The protocol required to type at least 50 multilocus profiles from locally resident individuals and two blind bloodstains in duplicate (i.e., using at least two different commercial kits), and to send the electropherograms to the Organizing Committee. Nineteen laboratories distributed across Italy participated, collecting a total of 960 samples. Full concordance was found for the five new miniSTRs as observed from the comparison of 13,150 alleles. The inspection of the electropherograms allowed the identification of a very limited number of mistypings in the miniSTR genotypes thus contributing to the establishment of an high quality Italian database of frequencies.