Rapid detection of mitochondrial sequence polymorphisms using multiplex solid-phase fluorescent minisequencing

This work describes a novel method, multiplex solid-phase fluorescent minisequencing, for the simultaneous detection of several point mutations and/or small deletions and insertions. The method is applied to the analysis of mitochondrial DNA polymorphisms for the purposes of individual identification. A database of 152 British Caucasians and 103 British Afro- Caribbeans has been constructed, and the probability of a chance match between two unrelated individuals is calculated as 0.054 for Caucasians and 0.026 for Afro-Caribbeans.