About
We present our bioinformatic application My-Forensic-Loci-queries (MyFLq)
for analysis of MPS forensic data. For allele calling, the underlying framework uses a MySQL reference allele database with automatically determined regions of interest (ROIs) by a generic maximal flanking algorithm which makes it possible to use any STR or SNP forensic locus. Python scripts were designed to automatically make allele calls starting from raw MPS data.
We are also implementing a method to asses the usefulness and overall performance of a forensic locus with respect to MPS, as well as methods to estimate whether an unknown allele, which sequence is not present in the MySQL database, is in fact a new allele or a sequencing error.
Funding
Funding was provided by the Ghent University Multidisciplinary Research Partnership ‘Bioinformatics: from nucleotides to networks’.
MyFLq was developed by researchers at Ghent University's
Laboratory of Pharmaceutical Biotechnology and led by Professor
and Laboratory Director Dieter Deforce, Ph.D (middle), postdoctoral
researcher, Filip Van Nieuwerburgh, Ph.D. (right), and Ph.D. student
Christophe Van Neste (left).