Forensic identification of skeletal remains from members of Ernesto Che Guevara’s guerrillas in Bolivia based on DNA typing

Abstract

We report the positive identification of several members of the guerrillas led by Ernesto "Che" Guevara on the 1960 s in Bolivia by means of DNA fingerprinting. Successful DNA typing of both short tandem repeat loci and the hypervariable region of the human mitochondrial DNA was achieved after extracting total DNA from bones obtained from two burial sites. Given the size of the Cuban database for the STR allele frequencies, a conservative approach was followed to estimate the statistical significance of the genetic evidence. The estimated probabilities of paternity for the two cases in which the paternity logic was applied were higher than 99%. One case was analyzed using mitochondrial DNA and could not be excluded from the identity proposed by the forensic anthropology team. A fourth case was identified by exclusion, on the basis of the positive identification of the other remains, the historical and other anthropological evidence.

Genetic structure of a Cuban population based on nine short tandem repeat loci

“…Short tandem repeats loci have been useful before for identification purposes in the Cuban population (Lleonart et al 2000). However, a detailed genetic characterization of this population for this type of markers was still needed for the routine use of STR in the forensic context.…”

A high‐performance multilane microdevice system designed for the DNA forensics laboratory

“…Probably the most important development has been the enormous success of the short tandem repeat (STR) method, first introduced by Jin in 1991 [1]. Aside from criminal cases, this method now has a wide range of applications in paternity testing, military identification, and historical investigations of the human population and other biological species [2][3][4]. The first highly successful criminal database was established in Europe in 1995 [5].…”

Autosomal STR genetic variation in negroid Chocó and Bogotá populations

“…Only a few autosomal STR studies have been performed on South American Caucasian Mestizo populations (Yunis et al 2000a(Yunis et al , 2000bLleonart et al 2000). However, the genetic admixture processes that have occurred in these countries during the last few centuries, requires an extensive genetic study in order to determine the necessity to implement population-specific databases for forensic purposes.…”