Genetic diversities of 20 novel autosomal STRs in Chinese Xibe ethnic group and its genetic relationships with neighboring populations

In the present study, we investigated the genetic polymorphisms of 20 novel STR loci and one previously studied locus in the Xibe ethnic group from China, as well as its genetic relationships with neighboring populations. Totally 226 unrelated healthy Xibe individuals were involved in the study. At least 5 alleles were observed for each locus, with the minimum and maximum allelic frequencies of 0.0022 and 0.5221, respectively. We obtained the lowest and highest observed heterozygosity and expected heterozygosity at locus D1S1627 and D19S433, respectively. The values of combined power of discrimination and probability of exclusion of all the 21 STR loci were 0.99999999999999999997310 and 0.999998650, respectively. Analyses of interpopulation differentiation, principal component analysis, genetic distance and phylogenetic tree revealed the relationships between Xibe group and its neighboring groups, showing that the studied Xibe group had a close genetic relationship with the Mongolian group. The present results indicated that these 21 STR loci had high genetic polymorphisms in the studied Xibe group, and were capable for the paternity testing and individual identification in forensic application.