The World's Premier Home Paternity Testing Service

In a recent case in South Africa, a woman discovered that for a DNA paternity test, her child’s alleged father switched his own DNA sample with a DNA sample from his girlfriend to ensure he was excluded as the child’s biological father. Although the test initially excluded him as the biological father, the laboratory recognized a problem with the sample and retested. The retested alleged father proved to be the biological father.

To catch such sample mix-ups, the laboratory at Beta Genetics tests the amelogenin locus of each sample. This DNA marker identifies the gender of the person’s submitting the sample. By analyzing the amelogenin locus, the lab may be alerted of situations of sample swaps by people of different genders. This also ensures that the lab is able to identify which sample belongs to which tested party if they are mislabeled or mixed up by the client. This means that if you were a woman participating in a paternity test with your son and his alleged father, the laboratory would expect two male samples and one female sample. If the laboratory received two female samples and one male sample, it would mean that the alleged father’s DNA was actually from a woman, not from him, assuming that your son’s DNA was correctly collected.

By testing the amelogenin locus, Beta is using one more safeguard to ensure accurate paternity test results.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 6th, 2007 at 7:18 pm and is filed under Home Paternity Tests. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.