Genetic polymorphisms and forensic efficiency of 19 X-chromosomal STR loci for Xinjiang Mongolian population

AIM: X-chromosomal short tandem repeat (X-STR) loci are playing an increasingly important role in some complex kinship cases in recent years. To investigate the forensic efficiency of X-STRs of Mongolian minority group from Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, China, and further depict the genetic relationship among Xinjiang Mongolians and other populations, 267 blood samples from unrelated healthy Xinjiang Mongolians were amplified by an AGCU X-19 STR kit. RESULTS: No deviations for all 19 X-STR loci were observed from the Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium after Bonferroni correction (p > 0.0026) in female samples. The most frequent allele was allele 10 at locus DXS10164 with the frequency 0.5663. The polymorphism information content values of the 19 X-STR loci were more than 0.5 with the highest polymorphism at the locus DXS10135. The cumulative power of discrimination were 0.99999999999999999999988761005481 in females and 0.999999999999903 in males, respectively; and the cumulative mean exclusion chances were 0.9999999969738068321121 in duos and 0.999999999998952 in trios, respectively. The seven linkage groups were extremely informative, with all the haplotype diversities greater than 0.9487. No linkage disequilibrium was observed for a significance level of 0.00029 (p = 0.05/171) after Bonferroni correction. The D(A) distances, multidimensional scaling plot and phylogenetic tree based on the 11 overlapping X-STR loci all presented that the Xinjiang Mongolian population was genetically different from other Asian populations, including the Mongolian population from Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, China. CONCLUSION: This study indicated that the 19 X-STR multiplex PCR system was of high utility value for both forensic practices and population genetic research in Xinjiang Mongolian group.