What is DNA•VIEW^TM?

An integrated software package for DNA identification

History

Leading paternity and crime laboratories have been using it since 1988. They appreciate not only the reliability and sophistication of the software, but also the authority that it represents – I personally designed, wrote, and support it. The design, especially in the details, owes much to direct interaction and feedback from many users.

Disaster identification

In September 2001 DNA•VIEW immediately became part of the World Trade Center victim identification work; it is the main analysis tool for DNA identification. The screening module and the Kinship program are the essential tools for finding and verifying DNA identifications, especially those where the link is to living relatives.

DNA•VIEW was widely used in Thailand as well as in Germany and Austria for tsunami victim identifications, and is also used for other mass identification projects including desaparacito children from El Salvador and war victims in Bosnia, Japan, Kuwait, and Iraq.

Casework

• Symbolic Kinship Program

  • analyzes all irregular cases including reconstruction, deficiency, incest, missing body, inheritance, even twin zygosity
  • incorporates Y-haplotypes
  • Kinship Simulation permits predicting the potential utility of DNA for a kinship problem.
  Applications include immigration casework in several countries; identifying Croatian & Bosnian war dead, Argentine orphans, SwissAir crash victims, World Trade Center victims

• Paternity case analysis – routine version

• automatically identifies allele sharing, and automatically handles motherless cases, maternity cases, missing alleles (nulls), mutations
• calculation of paternity index PI, probability of paternity W, and exclusion probability A
• interfaces to the PATER paternity report program (not included), or to custom report
• suitable for high volume of casework

• Crime case calculators

  • DNA profile matching odds (NRC II options)
  • Y-haplotype matching odds
  • Mixtures: likelihood ratio or exclusion

• Disaster identification

  See above.
  • Screening module
  • Kinship
  • Kinship simulation

Populations

	VWA allele frequencies Caucasian Black Japanese

• Allele/fragment length frequency databases:
  • available for all common loci and probes
  • compile automatically from your own case data
  • import or type in
  • graphical display (screen, printer, or research paper) and comparison
  • Convicted offender database capability – database search for duplicates or for a specified pattern
• Database validation:
• exact Hardy-Weinberg test (Guo & Thompson)
• exact test for independence of loci (for STR population data)
• Exact test for similarity of databases

Data Acquisition

Import data from various platforms including the ABI 3xxx, and the Hitachi FMBIO

• STR/PCR input automatic (ABI GeneMapper, Genotyper, Genescan, Hitachi STaRCall data files) or manual (type or mouse-click)
• RFLP-VNTR – various methods

More features

• Database validation & statistics
• estimate mutation rates from casework data

Recorded demo

recorded demo of DNA•VIEW

Hardware recommended

• PC (sorry, no Mac version. Even Mac running Windows simulator didn't work.)
• DOS-compatible laserjet (preferred) or inkjet printer

Miscellaneous information

• DNA•VIEW costs $7500. This price includes:
  • 1.5 days installation and training (travel expenses are additional),
  • a year of program updates and of mathematical and software technical support,
  • exchange of DNA•VIEW data bases via the DNA•VIEW Users' Group.
  • DNA•VIEW User's Manual. The 300+ page book
    • explains all the programs,
    • includes a tutorial giving keystroke-by-keystroke instructions for routine work,
    • has discussions on fundamental issues of statistics and probability,
    • is thoroughly indexed and illustrated.
• DNA•VIEW is in use at about 100 laboratories in six continents (Antarctica please come in).
  References available on request.

footnote

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