Forensic Identification: Database likelihood ratios and familial DNA searching

Abstract: Familial Searching is the process of searching in a DNA database for relatives of a certain individual. It is well known that in order to evaluate the genetic evidence in favour of a certain given form of relatedness between two individuals, one needs to calculate the appropriate likelihood ratio, which is in this context called a Kinship Index. Suppose that the database contains, for a given type of relative, at most one related individual. Given prior probabilities for being the relative for all persons in the database, we derive the likelihood ratio for each database member in favour of being that relative. This likelihood ratio takes all the Kinship Indices between the target individual and the members of the database into account. We also compute the corresponding posterior probabilities. We then discuss two methods to select a subset from the database that contains the relative with a known probability, or at least a useful lower bound thereof. One method needs prior probabilities and yields posterior probabilities, the other does not. We discuss the relation between the approaches, and illustrate the methods with familial searching carried out in the Dutch National DNA Database.