Short Tandem Repeat analysis after Whole Genome Amplification of single B-lymphoblastoid cells

Abstract

To allow multiple genetic analyses on a single cell, whole genome amplification (WGA) is required. Unfortunately, studies comparing different WGA methods for downstream human identification Short Tandem Repeat (STR) analysis remain absent. Therefore, the aim of this work was to assess the performance of four commercially available WGA kits for downstream human identification STR profiling on a B-lymphoblastoid cell line. The performance was assessed using an input of one or three micromanipulated cells. REPLI-g showed a very low dropout rate, as it was the only WGA method in this study that could provide a complete STR profile in some of its samples. Although Ampli1, DOPlify and PicoPLEX did not detect all selected STR markers, they seem suitable for genetic identification in single-cell applications.