Dog mitochondrial genome sequencing to enhance dog mtDNA discrimination power in forensic casework

Variation within the mtDNA coding region was explored to improve the discrimination power of dog mtDNA analysis. In the current study, the entire mitochondrial genome of 161 dogs was sequenced applying a quality assured strategy and resulted in a total of 119 different mitochondrial genome sequences. Our research was focused on those dogs with the six most common control region haplotypes from a previous Belgian population study. We identified 33 informative SNPs that successfully divide the six most common control region haplotypes into 32 clusters of mitochondrial genome sequences. Determining the identity of these 33 polymorphic sites in addition to control region sequencing in case of a match with one of these 6 control region haplotypes could augment the exclusion probability of forensic dog mtDNA analysis from 92.5% to 97.5%.