Genetic Identification Erasmus MC

Over the last years of autosomal chromosomes has been shown to be powerful in estimating a person's chronological & biological in clinical and forensic settings. But we dared to ask - what about a sex-specific age calculator? In this study published yesterday in Aging-US by the Epigenomics team of our Department, we tried for the first time to build an age prediction model based on the tiniest, but still favourite for some 😉, ! Practically, this will eventually allow us to perform age prediction specifically to the male part of a DNA mixture, as often recovered in physical and sexual assault cases. Stay tuned as we now move to more tissues and technologies! 🙌

Aging

We are excited to share with you that our new study on further characterizing the complexity of human , led by our Department and our colleagues from the International Visible Trait Genetics Consortium, has now been published in ! It seems that our study outcomes considerably exceed previous knowledge and expectations, highlighting eye color as a genetically highly complex human trait. Kudos to the entire team!

Genome-wide association study in almost 195,000 individuals identifies 50 previously unidentified genetic loci for eye color Human eye color is highly heritable, but its genetic architecture is not yet fully understood. We report the results of the largest genome-wide association study for eye color to date, involving up to 192,986 European participants from 10 populations. We identify 124 independent associations arising...

We are thrilled that our study on establishing the concept of universal is finally published in Genome Biology! Well done to the group of our Department, and especially to our PhD student Benjamín Planterose 👏

In a nutshell, we have isolated a stochastic component of DNA (epigenetic) variation in blood that seems to be different in all individuals, including monozygotic twins! How exciting to be able to validate our findings across technologies and tissues, and we look forward to apply this knowledge in practice, such as for differentiating identical twins that are involved in , and cases. Beyond forensics, we also envision further implications of our findings that branch out into regarding the of human beings 🙌

Equivalent DNA methylation variation between monozygotic co-twins and unrelated individuals reveals universal epigenetic inter-individual dissimilarity

In this month's issue of FSI: Genetics we are happy to publish our second research paper on microbiome-based classification of the body site of origin of forensically relevant traces - this time it's all about blood: menstrual, nasal, fingerprick, and venous bloodstains.

Check it if you are interested in novel microbiome approaches in forensics and/or deep neural networks - or if you want some extra reading during these special times!

Microbiome-based body site of origin classification of forensically relevant blood traces Human blood traces are amongst the most commonly encountered biological stains collected at crime scenes. Identifying the body site of origin of a for…

The first rapidly mutating short tandem repeats (RM Y-STRs) were described already a decade ago. This recent publication from our Department describes an effort that was made to identify additional RM Y-STRs, which resulted in a set consisting of 12 such markers. The paper also describes non-intrinsic features that have an impact on Y-STR mutability and makes some preliminary predictions about the value of these news RM Y-STRs to differentiate between close male relatives.

Identification and characterization of novel rapidly mutating Y‐chromosomal short tandem repeat markers Short tandem repeat polymorphisms on the male‐specific part of the human Y‐chromosome (Y‐STRs) are valuable tools in many areas of human genetics. Although their paternal inheritance and moderate mut...

What does the future hold for forensics? 🕵️‍♂️🤔

Dr. Athena Vidaki, a postdoc at our Dept, shares her views on this topic in the video interview below, taken place last fall as part of her participation at the 30th International Symposium of Human Identification at Palm Springs in California.

The Future of Forensic Science Athina Vidaki, a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands discusses the newest technologies and techniques in forensic scienc...

Are you a scientist willing to improve your science communication skills? Or are you curious about what other scientists actually do? 🧬 Come and experience it first hand! Get a chance to meet other scientists and ask them all of your burning questions or improve your science communication skills by answering them! 🗣 You have five minutes ⏳ Go! Drinks and snacks on us 🍻 ❤️
Join us in one of our events that will take place in Rotterdam and Delft (the Netherlands) between January-May 2020.
More information and registration: https://ilabu.erasmusmc.nl

Still very excited about our participation to the 28th International ISFG Congress in Prague two weeks ago! A week full of knowledge exchange, updates on ongoing forensic genetics research and active networking!

The Genetic Identification Department was well represented with two great talks from Arwin Ralf presenting on complex hypervariable STR markers for the deconvolution of complex DNA mixtures, Celia Díez López on a novel taxonomy-independent deep neural network microbiome approach for the classification of forensically-relevant human biomaterials, and four posters on Y-SNPs and epigenetics!

Counting down and already working on exciting projects for the next ISFG Congress in Washignton DC in September 2021!



Athena Vidaki, Gabriela Daňková, Lucie Hildegarda Kulhánková, Vivian Kalamara, Celia DL, Diego Montiel, Benjamín Planterose

Recently, we introduced the HIrisPlex-S system for the simultaneous prediction of eye, hair, and skin color based on 41 DNA variants generated from two forensically validated SNaPshot multiplex assays using capillary electrophoresis. Here, in this recently published paper, we introduce and validate massively parallel sequencing solutions for the HIrisPlex-S system on two MPS platforms commonly used in forensics, specifically the Ion Torrent and MiSeq that cover all 41 DNA variants in a single assay.

HIrisPlex-S system for eye, hair, and skin color prediction from DNA: Massively parallel sequencing solutions for two common forensically used plat... - PubMed - NCBI Forensic Sci Int Genet. 2019 Aug 26;43:102152. doi: 10.1016/j.fsigen.2019.102152. [Epub ahead of print]

We are very proud that the Head of our Department, Professor Manfred Kayser, is opening the 28th Conference of the International Society for Forensic Genetics with his 2017 Scientific prize lecture!

Our latest paper with an update on DNA predictability of tall stature in European is now available open-access. A total of 689 SNPs provided an AUC of 0.79, while a subset of 412 SNPs achieved 0.76. Over all, our study empirically exemplifies that the accuracy for predicting human appearance phenotypes with very complex underlying genetic architectures, such as adult height, can be improved by increasing the number of phenotype-associated DNA variants.

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We are happy to announce that our team ‘I-Lab-U’ has won the 250th Jubilee Anniversary scientific competition of the Batavian Society of Experimental Philosophy! 🥇

The team from our Department aims to experimentally improve the connection between scientists and the public by creating a new science communication tool based on speed dating. For more info, stay tuned!

Well done to all involved 👏🏽 Athena Vidaki Gabriela Daňková Celia DL Lucie Hildegarda Kulhánková Vivian Kalamara Diego Montiel Benjamín Planterose

📸 ©️ Wilmar Dik, Reclamebeeld.nl