The end of bad hair days

Abstract DNA typing of a single hair using conventional DNA extraction processes can often result in no DNA profile but here we describe augmenting the direct-PCR approach resulting in an increased number of alleles being generated. The process includes the use of Prep- n -Go™ buffer prior to direct PCR using the recently released GlobalFiler ® STR kit. Up-loadable DNA profiles were generated from all anagen hairs tested. Telogen hairs using Prep- n -Go™ resulted in 36% of the hairs generating up-loadable DNA profiles; this compared with 25% if no Pre- n -Go™ was used in the direct PCR. The addition of this step to the direct PCR of single hairs, both anagen and telogen, resulted in improved success in generating alleles using GlobalFiler ® .