Application of Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) technology in forensic science: A review

Abstract

One of the most important achievements of Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) is to produce millions of sequences reads in a short period of time, and to produce large sequences of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) in fragments of any size. Libraries can be generated from whole genomes or any DNA or RNA region of interest without the need to know its sequence beforehand. In the forensic field, one of the main problems is the limited amount of sample available, as well as its degraded state samples. Next-generation sequencing (NGS) technology, with its high-throughput capacity and low cost, has developed rapidly in recent years and become an important analytical tool for many genomics researchers. New opportunities in the research domain of the forensic studies emerge by using the power of next generation sequencing technology, which can be applied to simultaneously analyzing multiple loci of forensic interest in different genetic materials. Furthermore, next-generation sequencing (NGS) technology can also have potential applications in many other aspects of forensic science such as achieving the simultaneous analysis of the standard autosomal DNA (STRs and SNPs), deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) database construction, ancestry and phenotypic inferences, monozygotic twin studies, body fluid and species identification, forensic animal, plant and microbiological analyses, mitochondrial DNA, microbiological analysis, epigenetics analysis, MicroRNA analysis, animal and plant DNA analysis and X and Y chromosomal markers. In this study, we review the application of next generation sequencing (NGS) technology in the field of forensic science with the aim of providing a reference for future forensic studies and practice.