Swedish population data and concordance for the kits PowerPlex® ESX 16 System, PowerPlex® ESI 16 System, AmpFlSTR® NGM™, AmpFlSTR® SGM Plus™ and Investigator ESSplex

The European Standard Set of loci (ESS) has been extended with five additional short tandem repeat (STR) loci following the recommendations of the European Network of Forensic Science Institutes (ENFSI) and the European DNA Profiling Group (EDNAP) to increase the number of loci routinely used by the European forensic community. Subsequently, a new extended Swedish population database, based on 425 individuals, has been assembled using the new STR multiplex kits commercially available.Allele frequencies and statistical parameters of forensic interest for 15 autosomal STR loci (D3S1358, TH01, D21S11, D18S51, D10S1248, D1S1656, D2S1338, D16S539, D22S1045, vWA, D8S1179, FGA, D2S441, D12S391 and D19S433) were obtained from the analysis of the PowerPlex® ESX 16 System kit (Promega Corporation, USA). According to the data no evidence of deviations from Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium was found. The observed heterozygosity varies between 0.755 (TH01) and 0.892 (D1S1656). The power of discrimination was smallest for D22S1045 (0.869) and largest for D1S1656 (0.982) while the power of exclusion was smallest for TH01 (0.518) and largest for D1S1656 (0.778).A concordance study was performed on the five amplification systems: PowerPlex® ESX 16 System, PowerPlex® ESI 16 System (Promega Corporation, USA), AmpFlSTR® NGM™, AmpFlSTR® SGM Plus™ (Applied Biosystems, USA) and Investigator ESSplex (Qiagen, Germany) to reveal null alleles and other divergences between the kits. For the 425 DNA profiles included, AmpFlSTR® NGM™ revealed two null alleles, AmpFlSTR® SGM Plus™ revealed one, and Investigator ESSplex revealed a micro-variant, while the rest of the alleles showed full concordance between the kits tested.