Full mt-Genome Sequencing with mitochondrail Tiling Path Primers using the Ion Torrent PGM

Strobl,C.; Lagacé,R.; Chang,J.; Parson,W.

Sequencing analysis of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) has proved particularly important in forensic applications addressing samples that are not amenable to the typing of highly polymorphic nuclear DNA markers. However, sequencing of only the non-coding control region is sometimes not sufficiently informative for acquiring the required discrimination power needed in some forensic investigations. With the availability of new sequencing technologies, analysis of the complete mitochondrial genome (mtGenome) has become feasible and is likely to evolve into a method of first choice. For challenging samples routinely encountered in forensic casework, such as hair shafts or teeth and bones, which suffer severe environmental stress, DNA quantity and/or quality sometimes is insufficient for conventional Sanger sequencing. The purpose of this study was to test the utility of an alternative technique, the so called mito tiling approach, relying on massively parallel (next generation) sequencing, to sequence the entire human mtGenome in 162 amplicons of about 175bp in length .