Application of NGS technology for parentage testing and relatedness analysis

Next-generation sequencing (NGS) is a novel and promising approach to studying genetic relationships between people. This chapter deals with the application of this technology for parentage testing (both postnatal and prenatal) and kinship analysis. Providing length-based and sequence-based information, and because of its high throughput NGS offers big advantages over current CE-based STR genotyping. The ability to analyze a large number of various types of genetic markers in a single reaction greatly improves the discrimination power of parentage and kinship tests. The sequencing information obtained facilitates the detection of isoalleles, thus improving calculations of relatedness statistics in both parentages in kinship analysis.