POP-Gene TIMOR: first forensic DNA marker study of East-Timor people L. Souto a, * , L. Gusma ˜o b , A. Amorim b,c , E. Ferreira a , F. Co ˆrte-Real d,e , D.N. Vieira d,e , E.F. da Cruz e Silva a a Centro de Biologia Celular, Departamento de Biologia, Universidade de Aveiro, Aveiro, Portugal b Instituto de Patologia e Imunologia Molecular da Universidade do Porto, Portugal c Faculdade de Cie ˆncias, Universidade do Porto, Portugal d Delegac ßa ˜o de Coimbra, Instituto Nacional de Medicina Legal, Coimbra, Portugal e Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade de Coimbra, Portugal Abstract. The first population-genetics study for the world newest independent country, East Timor, is presented. In this preliminary work, part of a major ongoing study on East-Timor genetic diversity, the allele frequencies and some statistical parameters of forensic interest were determined for the 15 loci included in AmpFLSTR Identifilerk genotyping kit. A total of 107 samples, collected from East Timorese of several linguistic groups, was typed. All markers are in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium (except for D2S1338 and D5S818, but the deviations do not reach significance after Bonferroni correction). Observed heterozigosities varied between 72% (D5S818) and 92% (D8S1179). D 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: STR; East Timor; Identifiler; Population genetics 1. Introduction East Timor, a Portuguese colony from the 16th century until Indonesian occupation in 1975, gained finally its independence, after a tragic and complex political process on May 20th, 2002. East Timor is indeed a complex multilingual mosaic and its ethnic and linguistic heterogeneity has long attracted scientific interest in areas such as anthropology, linguistics and archaeology and constitutes a challenge to human genetics. The AmpFLSTRR Identifilerk PCR Amplification Kit (Applied Biosystems) is being widely used in forensics (as well as in paternity studies), as it complies with international standards and recommendations such as those from the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), the European Network of Forensic Science Institutes (ENFSI) and Interpol. We present preliminary data from the first (to our knowledge) DNA study concerning East-Timorese populations, as part of a broad ongoing study of East-Timor 0531-5131/ D 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/S0531-5131(03)01533-4 * Corresponding author. Tel.: +351-234-370783; fax: +351-234-426408. E-mail address: lsouto@bio.ua.pt (L. Souto). www.ics-elsevier.com International Congress Series 1261 (2004) 201 – 203