Cologne Center for Genomics, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany.
Cologne Center for Genomics, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany.
Forensic Sci Int Genet. 2019 Mar;39:109-118. doi: 10.1016/j.fsigen.2019.01.001. Epub 2019 Jan 2.
DNA-based prediction of externally visible characteristics has become an established approach in forensic genetics, with the aim of tracing individuals who are potentially unknown to the investigating authorities but without using this prediction as evidence in court. While a number of prediction models have been proposed, use of prior probabilities in those models has largely been absent. Here, we aim at compiling information on the spatial distribution of eye and hair coloration in order to use this as prior knowledge to improve prediction accuracy. To this end, we conducted a detailed literature review and created maps showing the eye and hair pigmentation prevalence both by countries with available information and by interpolation in order to obtain prior estimates for populations without available data. Furthermore, we assessed the association between these two traits in a very large data set. A strong limitation was the quite low amount of available data, especially outside Europe. We hope that our results will facilitate the improvement of already existing and of novel prediction methods for pigmentation traits and induce further studies on the spatial distribution of these traits.
基于 DNA 的外部可见特征预测已成为法医学中一种既定的方法，其目的是追踪那些调查机关可能不了解的个人，但不将这种预测作为法庭证据使用。虽然已经提出了许多预测模型，但这些模型中很少使用先验概率。在这里，我们旨在收集有关眼睛和头发颜色分布的信息，以便将其作为先验知识来提高预测准确性。为此，我们进行了详细的文献回顾，并创建了地图，显示了有可用信息的国家以及通过插值获得的眼睛和头发色素沉着的流行情况，以便为没有可用数据的人群获得先验估计。此外，我们还在一个非常大的数据集评估了这两个特征之间的关联。一个非常大的局限性是可用数据量相当低，尤其是在欧洲以外的地区。我们希望我们的结果将有助于改进现有的和新型的色素沉着特征预测方法，并促使进一步研究这些特征的空间分布。
