The short tandem repeat loci adopted by the international forensic DNA community, Singapore

Question 1.4

Consider the following statements:

1. The short tandem repeat loci adopted by the international forensic DNA community typically exhibit high mutation rates, which gives rise to their high power of discrimination.
2. The genetic differences that can be exploited in forensic DNA testing include point mutations and microsatellites.
3. The factors that give rise to DNA variation between individuals include errors during DNA replication as well as DNA rearrangements.
4. Human individualization requires characteristics that vary between individuals as well as the frequencies of those characteristics.
5. The STR loci adopted by the forensic community consist typically of dint and tri-nt core sequences as they exhibit less stutter.
6. Alleles within an STR locus are inherited in an inter-dependent manner.
7. The null allele arises due to mutations in the primer binding site of the STR amplicon. As a result, heterozygote imbalance or even false homozygosity could be seen in the DNA profile.

Which of the following is correct?

• Statements 1, 3, and 4 are FALSE
• Statements 4, 5, and 6 are FALSE
• Statements 2, 3, 4, and 7 are TRUE
• Statements 1, 2, 5, and 6 are FALSE
• Statements 1, 5 and 6 are TRUE