A comparative study between two protocols for DNA extraction from bones

Abstract

In some situations such as mass fatality incidents, homicides, armed conflicts, war crimes, genocides, crimes against humanity and terrorism, DNA typing from bones may be the only method of human identification able to identify missing persons. The choice of the protocol for DNA extraction from bone samples may be decisive for the results of DNA typing and for the identification. Some extracting protocols use large amounts of bone material and other protocols use less starting material. The best protocols should use a smaller amount of bone, a smaller volume of reagents and should have fewer inhibition problems while resulting in high quality of profiles recovered.In this study, we compared two protocols, modified organic phenol–chloroform and the extraction protocol described in Edson et al. [5], for DNA extraction from 20 bones exhumed and not exhumed from casework, including challenging samples from highly degraded skeletal remains. This work showed that, comparing the two protocols, modified organic phenol–chloroform protocol was more efficient regarding the amount of DNA recovered and the quality of profiles obtained. The protocols used in this study require between 1 and 2g of bone powder. The same bone samples are currently being tested with protocols that require less starting bone material such as full demineralization protocols. As data from these tests are concluded, we will compare the results of all protocols tested.