Genetic Substructure of the Italian Population at the VNTR Loci D1S80 and D17S30: The Tuscan Region

Hypervariable loci within the human genome are useful tools in several disciplines. Because of their high informational content, they resurrected genetic linkage studies in families (Nakamura et al. 1987) and served extensively in forensic science (Reynolds et al. 1991). It has been estimated that each human genome is heterozygous at 3×106 nucleotide sites. Consequently, it is theoretically possible the unique identification of individuals from their DNA.