Multiple genetic analyses to investigate the polymorphisms of Chinese Mongolian population with an efficient short tandem repeat panel

AIM: To determine allele frequencies and forensic statistics of 22 autosomal short tandem repeat loci in Chinese Mongolian population. METHODS: Blood specimens were collected from 134 unrelated healthy Mongolian individuals, and 22 short tandem repeat loci were co-amplified and genotyped. Allele frequencies and forensic parameters were calculated, and population genetic differences were analyzed among Mongolian population and other eight Chinese populations: Northern Han, Guangdong Han, Chengdu Han, Xinjiang Hui, Xinjiang Uygur, Hainan Li, Qinghai Tibetan, and Hainan Han. RESULTS: All the loci were in the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, and after Bonferroni correction there was no linkage disequilibrium between them. The allele frequencies of these 22 loci were between 0.0037 and 0.3657. This panel had high discriminating power and genetic polymorphism in the Mongolian population, with combined power of discrimination of 0.999999999999999999999999998399 and combined probability of exclusion of 0.9999999999566925. Structure analysis showed no evidence that these nine Chinese populations had different component distribution. However, genetic distance analysis showed significant differences among them (P < 0.05). CONCLUSION: The combined application of these 22 loci could be useful for forensic purposes in the Mongolian population. Mongolian population had smaller genetic distances from the populations in northern China (Northern Han, Xinjiang Uygur, and Xinjiang Hui) than from the populations in Hainan province (Hainan Han and Hainan Li populations).