A proposal for standardization in forensic bovine DNA typing: allele nomenclature of 16 cattle-specific short tandem repeat loci.

In this study, a proposal is presented for the allele nomenclature of 16 polymorphic short tandem repeat (STR) loci (BM1824, BM2113, ETH10, ETH225, INRA023, SPS115, TGLA122, TGLA126, TGLA227, ETH3, TGLA53, BM1818, CSRM60, CSSM66, HAUT27 and ILSTS006) for bovine genotyping (Bos taurus). The nomenclature is based on sequence data of the polymorphic region(s) of the STR loci as recommended by the DNA commission of the International Society of Forensic Genetics for human DNA typing. To cover commonly and rarely occurring alleles, a selection of animals homozygous for the alleles at these STR loci were analysed and subjected to sequence studies. The alleles of the STR loci consisted either of simple or compound dinucleotide repeat patterns. Only a limited number of alleles with the same fragment size showed different repeat structures. The allele designation described here was based on the number of repeats including all variable regions within the amplified fragment. The set of 16 STR markers should be propagated for the use in all bovine applications including forensic analysis.