Forensic weight-of-evidence for unilineal markers

Supervisor: David Balding

Available for: MSc only

Location: Melbourne Integrative Genomics, University of Melbourne

Project title: Forensic weight-of-evidence for unilineal markers

Description: Together with Dr Mikkel Andersen of Aalborg University in Denmark, I have recently published a paper and accompanying software that can approximate the distribution of the number of men matching a given Y-chromosome profile under various population genetics models.  This leads to a scientifically robust and easy to understand way to present Y-profile evidence in courts.  More work is needed to develop this method, for mixtures of Y chromosomes from different men, to take account of any known Y profiles among relatives of the suspected contributor, and also to the corresponding problem for the female-lineage mitochondrial DNA profiles.

See more here.

Andersen MM, Balding DJ (2017) How convincing is a matching Y-chromosome profile? PLoS Genet 13(11): e1007028. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1007028