Background: When the mother's DNA profile is not available for paternity testing, there is a smaller probability that a locus will exclude an alleged father. This study aims to evaluate the risk of potential false paternity inclusions in motherless cases.
Study design and methods: More than 20 000 duos were generated by removing the maternal genotypes from exclusion trios. After recalculating paternity in these duos, any found inclusions would be false.
Results: The use of an appropriate number of loci, mutation model, and mutation rates to analyze motherless paternity cases was robust against false inclusions. A single potential false inclusion was observed in a case wherein kinship plays a role. This result highlights the importance of testing the mother when available and of obtaining information on family circumstances for the proper handling of cases involving related individuals.
Conclusion: The guidelines we used here were sufficient to avoid false inclusions in a data set of more than 20 000 motherless cases.
Keywords: STR loci; deficient paternity; duo; false inclusion; motherless; paternity.
© 2020 AABB.